



PKHSKNTCI) 1$Y 



munkiN and Private 
Operation of Public Utilities 



RELATIVE TO THE LABOR REPORT 
OF THE 

NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION 

Commission on Public Ownership and 
Operation 



By J. W. SULLIVAN 

ONE OF THE TWO LABOR INVESTIGATORS 



123 BIBLE HOUSE 
NEW YORK 

1908 



('\\;eekly Bulletin of the CTothlng Trades.) 
SULLIVAN VS. COMMONS. 



A Correspondence Which Explains It- 
self — Bro. Sullivan Refuses to Ac- 
cept an Apology as Not in Good 
Faith. 

September 28, 1908. 
Mr. J. W. Sullivan, 123 Bible House, 
New York City. 

Dear Sir: A copy of your printed 
attack on me has come into my hands. 
I wish to make sincere apology to you 
tor my stupid statement that I had 
written the entire report. It was not 
my intention to claim authorship or 
sole work of investig-ation, and I did 
not realize that I had done so. My 
attention was bent on the other parts 
of the paragraph setting forth my 
confidence in the accuracy of the joint 
report, and in allowing myself thought- 
lessly to inject that statement I did 
you a wrong which I regret with the 
keenest sorrow and chagrin, and 
which, I admit, gave you just provo- 
cation for a hot retort. I hope you 
will be able to give to this apology as 
wide publicity as was given to my 
original statement. 

1 am asking Chairman Ingalls to ar- 
range for an investigation and report 
on our good faith and methods of in- 
vestigation, as you will see by the In- 
closed copy of my letter to him. After 
such report has been made I may be 
able to take up the questions of fact, 
interpretation and economic theory 
which you raise in your pamphlet. 
Sincerely yours, 
JOHN R. COMMONS. 



(From J. W. Sullivan.) 

September 29, 1908. 
Mr. Melville E. Ingalls. 

Dear Sir: Never, I venture to say, 
outside the realms of opera bouffe, did 
defamer offer defamed an apology so 
extraordinarily incredible and prepos- 
terous as the one I have just received 
from John R. Commons. It takes 
grade in tomfool absurdity with that 
story of mining-camp life in which a 
committee wait on a woman to inform 
her she has just become a widow. 
"Madam," says the spokesman, "we 
hung your husband as a horse thief 
last night. To-day we've found out 
he W8.S innocent. We've come to sin- 
cerely apologize to you — for the joke's 
on us." 

More than fifteen months ago, in my 
absence. Commons, my late colleague 
as labor investigator, reported in print 
to the Committee of Twenty-one on 
Investigation and thereafter in the 
commission's reports to the public: 
"The entire [labor] report as it stands, 
except New Haven and Philadelphia, 
was written by myself on the basis of 
facts which I personally investigated.** 
No statement of more importance than 
this to me, or of more significance to 
many men in labor circles, or to the 
commissioners of the two sides in the 
discussion of municipal ownership, was 
— I believe I may safely say — made in 
the entire labor report. It was a far- 
reaching assertion, if not the most in- 
jurious, in a series of personalities di- 
rected at me by Commons, the only 
man who in the mass of writing for 
the bulky reports attacked his col- 
league—and I was absent. That as- 
sertion he weighed, if he ever weighs 
his words, before committing it to his 
manuscript; he most probably re-read 



it in the typewriting, in the proof 
sheets, in the circular form going to 
the members of the Twenty-One, and 
he had ample time to review it in the 
completed volumes. Yet he now says 
he "thoughtlessly injected that state- 
ment" in his matter! If so, on what 
occasions does he keep awake and 
think? 

That statementi I denounced as un- 
true and defamatory in a communica- 
tion to the Civic Federation as soon as 
I heard of it, which was weeks after 
it had been published, for I was in 
Europe at the time and Commons had 
not sent me his review before publica- 
tion, as bound by courtesy and con- 
tract. In a number of letters later to 
members of the Civic Federation — to 
Dr. Maltbie and Professor Bemis, 
among others — I protested against it 
and other misrepresentations of me by 
Commons. I even offered, if he would 
eliminate his personalities from his 
matter before it became a part of the 
permanent records — the Reports them- 
selves — to let the question rest. My re- 
monstrances never brought my ex-col- 
league out of his spell of "stupid" 
"thoughtlessness" until, a few weeks 
ago, when, home again, I was enabled 
to make sure and publish the fact that 
I still had in my possession my manu- 
script of the considerable parts of the 
report I had written and sufficient 
documents to show my important 
share in the labor investigation. And 
it was only on the rude shock with 
which by this means I awakened 
Commons that he "realized" for the 
first time that he had erroneously 
claimed "the sole work of investiga- 
tion." What he tried to do, in the 
plain intent of his quoted words, was 
to make of me in our joint work a 
character not only of as little ac- 
count as the proverbial fly on the 
wheel, but one to be distrusted. Only 
when he sees that I am on hand to 
produce convincing material evidence 
of it does he respond to my repeated 
demands upon members of the Civic 
Federation that he be made to ac- 
knowledge the truth. Awake now, 
sorry, chagrined, since he is cornered 
and caught, he becomes anxious to 
persuade his fellows-commissioners that 
he acted "in good faith." Had I passed 
over to the majority during the year 
and more since he "injected" his vil- 
lainous personalities against me in the 
Reports, what move would he ever 
have made to re-establish the reputa- 
tion he had endeavored (by bearing 
false witness) to injure irreparably? 
Or had I neglected keeping my manu- 
script? Respectfully yours. 

J. W. SULLIVAN. 



Bro. Sullivan puts in these words 
his position toward Prof. Commons' in- 
vestigation: "I have already published 
(page^ 59 pamphlet), the conditions in 
which I stand ready to respond to 
complaints from honest men. When 
Messrs. Gompers, Larger, and Bram- 
wood decide that there is any need of 
an investigation, they will no doubt 
notify the Civic Federation. Bu^ 
there's a list of men named in m- 
pamphlet whose complaints of unfaii 
ness against Prof. Commons stanc 
prior *to any assumption of a right b> 
him to appear before an investigatin 
committee purged of sins against tru^ i 
to Avhich they have borne written tf 
timony. He ought to answer th 
gentlemen first." 



n 






^ 



;> A'^ 



LETTER TO SAMUEL GOMPERS. 



To Samuel Gompers, President American Federation of Labor r 

Being accountable directly to you, since you mainly were re- 
sponsible for me, in the municipal ownership inquiry, I address 
these pages first of all to you. 

You, as the foremost trade-union official of the labor group 
in the National Civic Federation, presided at the conference at 
which I was made a member of the Committee of Twenty- One on 
Investigation and the Labor member! of the Committee of Five on 
Plan and Scope. Whether or not you named me, you were doubt- 
less consulted before I was placed on these committees. 

Besides, the trials of comradeship had settled in you some confi- 
dence in me. On being informed that I had further been appointed 
one of the two investigators of labor conditions, you wrote me : "I 
felt that no man in my wide, range of acquaintance was better fitted 
than you to undertake a thorough, dispassionate, and impartial in- 
vestigation and to report the results as you found them." When 
you thus wrote we had been associated in the labor movement half 
a lifetime. On many occasions you had shown that you placed reli- 
ance on me in serious work. You yourself nominated me at a con- 
vention of the, American Federation of Labor so that I became one 
of its two delegates in 1896 to the British Trade Union Congress' 
at Edinburgh. Through you the Executive Council made me Gen- 
eral Lecturer on Initiative and Eeferendum in the years 1892-9.>. 
You have repeatedly commended my writings on labor subjects dur- 
ing the last twenty-five 3^ears, appointed me on leading committees 
at conventions and conferences, and have invited me to preside at 
important Labor or public meetings. Our relations have invariably 
been such that, whatever our differences as to policies, you have 
never ceased for a day to manifest your expectation that on under- 
taking a task I would end it with a report satisfactory at least in 
exhibiting fair endeavor. 

It must, then, have arrested your attention when you read in my 
colleague's review his strictures on the character of my work while 
I shared his duties. You could only have felt dissatisfied thereaf- 
ter in not finding anywhere in the voluminous reports of the Com- 
mission any reply whatever from me to this attack. According to 
my fellow-investigator I had in my review done what to him w^as 
"impossible." I had been "one-sided" ; I had given "selected facts'^ 
and not "all the facts" ; I had "picked out sentences here and there"" 
favorable to private ownership and "discredited the sentences" fa- 
vorable to municipal ownership; I had not taken the report as a 
whole, with the facts brought together in their true proportions, as 
he had done ; his contradictions of me would lead the reader to in- 
fer that I had not summarized all the facts ; I had perverted, misin- 
terpreted and vitiated facts ; I was, as it seemed, also to be argued 
against as being among "the defenders of utility corporations." 
And, in the course of a personal explanation made "with the greatest 
reluctance," my colleague would make a cipher of me in our work 



2 LETl'ER TO SAMUEL GOMPERS. 

by asserting that he wrote our "entire report as it stands, except 
New Haven and Philadelphia," on the basis of facts which, irrespec- 
tive of me, he had "personally investigated." 

Were these representations exact, Samuel Gompers might well 
be justified in calling on me to explain why in this important mis- 
sion I had failed to be thorough, dispassionate and impartial. He 
and the officials of international unions who witnessed with appro- 
val my appointment, and union men in general, have a right to 
expect me to disprove what my colleague, become my adversary, has 
thus alleged. 

I herewith give my reply. I would print it for my own peace 
of mind and as a public duty even if it were not actually called for 
by any one interested. I want to be clean in character in order to 
be useful. I will not permit a hostile hand to exclude me from the 
fields I have selected for social service. I intend to let those read- 
ers in whose minds my colleague has sown the seeds of distrust have 
their opportunity to judge as to which of us in our work for the 
Commission did his best to bring out the truth. 

But I am by no means inspired to write what I do in the fol- 
lowing chapters solely through a necessity for placing myself aright 
before those interested. In his review. Investigator Commons, in 
making statements concerning the private agencies of public ser- 
vice, has gone to unwarranted extremes. Not permitted by me in 
such cases to embody his partisan notions in our joint report, he 
was able to put them forth only when I was no longer on hand to 
check him. I recognize my obligation to the public to publish evi- 
dences of his errors in these respects at my earliest opportunitv. 
And, further, the circumstances of his attack on me justify me in 
looking into assertions he made with my consent in our joint report 
on his own unverified inquiries. \^^ierein he there did injustice 1 
make amends. 

What I say against Investigator Commons' methods in the fol- 
lowing chapters has been forced from me. Had not my team-m.ate, 
alone among all the pairs of the investigators, so far foj gotten him- 
self in my absence as to proceed not only to personalities, but to an 
unbridled licensa of misstatement, I would have continued to pass 
by in silence much of what I must now relate. The publication of 
this rejoinder and the impairment of standing certain to result 
therefrom to John R. Commons are wholly the direct consequences 
of his own unwise and wrongful acts. 

Yours fraternally, 

J. W SULLIVAN. 



RELATIVE TO THE LABOR REPORT. 



DID INVESTIGATOR COMMONS WRITE "THE ENTIRE RE- 
PORT AS IT STANDS?" ETC. HIS COLLEAGUE'S 
SHARE IN THE BRITISH REPORT. 

1 take up first Investigator Commons' partition of the author- 
ship of our joint report : 

"The entire report as it stands, except New Haven and Phil- 
adelphia," he says in his review, (page 91, Vol. T, and same page in 
this vohimr). "was written by myself on the basis of facts which 
I personally investigated.^' 

To begin with our work together in Great Britain — two chap- 
ters in Part II, vol. II, "Eeports of Experts — United Kingdom/^ 
pages 1 to 112 and 550 to 627) : 

When Investigator Commons arrived from New York by Avay 
of Queenstown at Dublin, June 1, 1906, with others of the Commit- 
tee of Twenty-One, I had been at work in Great Britain three 
months. He and I were thenceforth at our investigations in Brit- 
ain together nearly eight weeks. At the end of that time he had ten 
days to go back over our route alone, taking passage then for Amer- 
ica from Liverpool in the first week of August. I sailed by a dif- 
ferent steamship line from London at the same time. I had been 
in Great Britain five months, he two months. 

On his arrival referred to in Dublin I passed over to Investi- 
gator Commons literally half a trunkful of written and printed 
matter relating to our labor inquiry which I myself had gathered. 
The mass of it was made up of the filled-out labor schedules from 
most of the eighteen British undertakings under investigation and. 
printed matter relating to them, such as annual reports for several 
years, pamphlets, circulars, newspaper clippings. Besides were 
manuals of cities to be visited, letters to me from managers, and 
books and documents of sundry sorts pertaining to our mission. 
The collection, where possible classified by undertakings, was most- 
ly arranged in large manila envelope pouches, properly labeled. 
While I had gathered some of it through correspondence from Lon- 
don, the larger part I had received from the hands of works man- 
agers, councillors and labor union officials of the cities on our list. 
As one of the two from the Committee of Five representing the Com- 
mission in Great Britain, I had in March and April visited the men 
in control of the undertakings in the Provinces and obtained their 
consent to have their plants and books examined. I thus visited as 
pioneer of the Commission Birmingham, Leicester, Sheffield, Man- 
chester, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Glasgow. In each of these cities, 
while awaiting appointments with managers or between my inter- 
views with them, I called untiringly, day and evening, on other men 
who might give me pertinent labor information. I had introductory 
letters everywhere to such men ; I had already a personal acquaint- 
ance with many union secretaries and other labor representatives, 
having spent three weeks at Congress time at Edinburgh and trav- 



4 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

eJed another four weeks among unionists in Britain in 1896. Thus, 
no stranger, I obtained satisfactory interviews. In London, previous 
to going to Dublin, I saw the President of the Dublin Tramways 
Company, the manager of the Xorwich company and officials of 
every one of the London undertakings we were to visit. Hence, on 
meeting me in Dublin, Investigator Commons found a good part — 
and the hardest part — of his work sand mine as labor investigators 
in th>e field done for every one of the undertakings. Xot the least 
helpful was that I had ascertained in many cases which labor men 
that we were to meet were able, and which not, to impart to us 
knowledge from their experience. In our travels onward on our 
itinerary from Dublin Investigator Commons had therefore usually 
but to follow my lead. Pressed for time as we were, I knew the 
whereabouts of men and the way about the cities. Xot being de- 
tained in making groundwork inquiries, which were answered in 
the data I had collected, we were enabled to proceed at once to ad- 
vanced queries. Councillors, managers and others interested, pre- 
viously invited through Dr. Maltbie and myself, met the Twenty- 
One in the various cities, and in not a few instances I had ascer- 
tained which among them could answer queries as to labor. In Lon- 
don my assistance to Investigator Commons became even greater, 
as, besides knowing the city itself through previous visits, I had 
since my arrival there in the first week in March spent all the time 
possible with London County Councillors, Labor and other Eadical 
Members of Parliament, editors, and men prominent in gas, tram- 
way, and electricity undertakings. ]\Iy colleague had never crossed 
the ocean before. 

Comparing notes, separating the chaff from the grain, to some 
extent summarizing, "checking up" on points as to which one of us 
might have more information than the other, blocking out the plan 
for our report — this part of our labors immediately preceded our 
separation in London. For this purpose Investigator Commons 
and I met daily for two weeks, mostly at the First Avenue Hotel, 
Holborn, where the entire corps of experts were going over their 
work. Investigator Commons had proposed that on his return to 
his home in Madison, Wis., in August, he should write out the first 
continuous draft of our joint labor report for Britain. Consequent- 
ly, at our meetings at the hotel, while deciding on points to be in- 
corporated, a considerable part of our work was taken up in the 
discussion, and frequently adoption, of the results of my own ob- 
servations. I had, and still have, a pile of notebooks containing 
hundreds of pages of pencil notes entered from day to day in the 
course of my work. My colleague, pen in hand, as we talked, fre- 
quently took down my words or phrases, which now appear in our 
joint report. In these discussions I gave him reasons for correcting 
not a few of his impressions. I especially directed his attention to 
the modification among its intelligent labor supporters in Britain of 
demands for further municipal ownership, to the absence of forms 
of co-operation, or profit-sharing, in municipal imder takings, to the 
lack of identity between the various organizations of municipal em- 
ployees with true trade unionism, and to the fact that skilled work- 
men get from municipal employers only the trade union enforced 
scale, while the wages of the unskilled, who are mostly men. of one 
grade, offer no true basis of comparison with the range of wages 



WHO WROTE THE BRITISH REPORT? 5 

paid by companies to men of man}' grades. To a greater or less 
extent these ideas went into the joint report. 

Good reasons existed why one of us only should baste together 
a draft of the report in its complete verbal dress. We could not each 
have my collection of documents at once, now supplemented by 
further collections from us both. It would have proved an unnec- 
essary cost and a silly proceeding for eacli of us, with a prospect of 
differences as to facts to be sufficiently indicated in paragraphs, to 
duplicate a general paraphrasing of reports and quotation of tables 
and official circulars that made chapters. As to mere form and ar- 
rangement. Investigator Commons had an interest not affecting me. 
The investigation was to me an episode; to him it was in line with 
his vocation and livelihood. He had a career as investigator to 
watch over. Conventionalities of college or government report 
makers, trifling to me, might look large to him. The probabilities 
of agreement in our reading of the facts increased with him as the 
recorder, since — considering the developments — I could aiford lib- 
eral concessions. Besides, he told me he intended making up the 
m.anuscript during his summer holidays, the fructification being to 
him an extra ten dollars per diem. 

When I reached Madison, Oct. 1, to work with him on the re- 
port. Investigator Commons, his vacation over, had much of our 
British matter in manuscript. Students of the university were at 
work on the Avage Dables for the construction of which we had 
planned some uniformity. At Madison and later in New York, I 
read the worked over typewritten copies of the manuscript as the 
parts were turned out. My letters from my colleague at this time 
speak of my doing this work. When in type, the proof sheets were 
read by me. In these processes I changed words and sentences, 
added here and omitted there. The British report was thus our 
joint production, at every stage, even to its writing. 

I know of no whole set of facts in this part of the report that 
my colleague independently investigated. He had but one advan- 
tage of men in our work in Great Britain — the freemasonry of the 
Socialists and perfervid municipalists. From these sources — the 
two being much the same — he drew a batch of stories the refutation 
of which I print herewith in subsequent chapters. He never ad- 
vanced the British labor investigation by a considerable degree on 
any capital point except "Suffrage," the documentary foundation 
for which, however, he obtained in part from my trunk. I could 
sit with a jury and point out, page by page, throughout, what in 
the report is from my notes, the printed matter I collected, the 
schedules from managers or the interviews at which both of us were 
present. The interweavings of the product of our teamwork could 
be traced by the contents of my notebooks or documents with my 
marks of possession on them, or by pieces of work done by others 
under my direction. For example : The matter in small type, pages 
9 and 10, Investigator Commons intended printing as our own until 
I wrote its introduction and gave it the form of quotation. The 
work of the Citizens' Union, described pages 14-16, was brought to 
his attention by me and another member of the Twenty-One, and 
its secretary, at our invitation, met our committee as a body. The 
Glasgow Council session, described pages 21-22, was attended by me 
when I was in Glasgow alone, and the notes of the speeches on the 



6 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

occasion printed in small type are mine. The labored attempt to 
offset charges of favoritism in appointments made at that session, 
down to page 27, was drawn out by notes taken by me while the 
heated Councillors wrangled. The quotations relative to Glasgow 
employees, pages 28-30, came largely from printed reports first given 
to me personally. The interview with a Leicester Councillor re- 
ferred to on page 33 was mine. The matter descriptive of the Mu- 
nicipal Employees' Association, pages 36-38, I had obtained from its 
secretary in London in March and its Scottish District Organizer in 
Glasgow in April, with both of whom I had several interviews. Tn 
the compilations on pages 42-80 are points from my notebooks, re- 
ports, etc., as well as from my colleague's. More largely Investiga- 
tor Commons' than any other part of our joint report is the chapter 
^'Profit-sharing or Copartnership,'' pages 82-102, and in another 
chapter I deal with it as an example of his deliberate bias. The re- 
plies to the schedule questions, pages 550 to 627, were compiled by 
students at Madison almost wholly from schedule books filled out 
by me or through me at the works investigated. 

At this point I invite the reader to pause and re-read Investi- 
gator Commons' averment that our joint report and investigation, 
except Xew Haven and Philadelphia, were his personally. That 
done, I ask : What was the reader's impression when he first read 
that assertion? And what is it now? If his impression as to my 
share in the British w^ork remains unchanged. Investigator Com- 
mons made thereanent a truthful statement. 

DID INVESTIGATOR COMMONS WRITE "THE ENTIRE 

REPORT AS IT STANDS?" HIS COLLEAGUE'S 

SHARE IN THE AMERICAN REPORT. 

We come now to the joint labor report on the American under- 
takings — (four chapters in Part II, vol. I, "Eeports of Experts — 
United States," pages 136-158, ^'Waterworks"; 490-536, "Gas- 
works"; 749-758, "Electricity Supply"; 885-897, "Answers to 
Schedules"). 

The question as to the authorship of this division of our re- 
port does not turn on the various meanings of the words "written" 
in Investigator Commons' sentence, "The entire report as it stands 
except New Haven and Philadelphia was written by myself," etc. 
A rudimentary conscience might be satisfied by looking at his word 
"written" as signifying, in reference to the British report, spelling 
off the v/ords on paper; and if the reader should happen to inter- 
pret the word as meaning authorship in all its drudgery of thought 
and expression, the fault might be found in the defects of our am- 
biguous vernacular. 

But no sophisms as to the faceted uses of words can pass as 
applied to the American report. 

I wrote, of our joint American chapters on labor, as printed, 
twenty-two of the forty-nine pages of the text, apart from Xew 
Haven and Philadelphia, and I assisted in the compilation of the 
tabular matter and small type quotations. To particularize: I 
wrote, except a few lines in each, the vv'hole of the sub-chapters on 
Indianapolis, Atlanta and Richmond, and considerable passages in 
those on Chicago, South Xorwalk and Allegheny, and somewhat 
of those on Cleveland and Wheeling. For proof, I hold in my pos- 



WHO WKOTE THE AMERICAN KEPOKT? 7 

session my original manuscript, which I saw to it was returned to 
me by the typewriter in Madison, and which compares with the 
parts I mention word for word, except eliminations made in the 
typewritten copy by Investigator Commons. The answers to sched- 
ules I wrote entirely, except a line here and there relating to Rich- 
mond. In much of the matter not thus included as mine appear 
sentences or parts of paragraphs just as they were written by me 
before Investigator Commons worked over portions of my draft 
to inject in it his own personal investigations of political conditions 
rutside the purview of our schedules after I had quit the field. 

Six weeks after my return in August from London, having 
alone meantime visited South Xorwalk, Syracuse, Allegheny, 
Wheeling, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Chicago, T went to 
Madison, Wis., where Investigator Commons had been detained at 
tlie university, and during my stay there of more than three weeks 
I wrote 150 large pages (at least 15,000 words) as a first draft for 
our American report, from which we might select what should be 
approved by both. To Investigator Commons I gave a typewritten 
copy of this matter, which he has come to speak of as of his own 
composition. 

The final editorial reading of the American report was mine, 
as may be seen by my marks on the proof sheets, which I have. 

The reader has here before him a case of point blank assertion 
and counter-assertion as to fathership of the joint labor report 
which needs no sword of Solomon to settle. No one need re-read 
often or ponder long my contradiction on this point to weigh 
whether or not I have convicted Investigator Commons of down- 
right falsehood. 

And there was much of his work for the Commission in which 
his moral dereliction was just as flagrant and shameless. Of this 
further charge, I produce the proofs in coming pages. 

"THE ABSENT ARE IN THE WRONG." 

Hovv^ is it that I have not hitherto come forward to contradict 
the amiazing misstatements of Investigator Commons? Wliy did 1 
not confront him at the meeting of the Twenty-One on June 10, 
1907? 

On April 3, 1907, I sailed from New York for Europe, to be 
gone a year, or ]}erhap3 two years. I remained abroad thirteen 
months. By a series of events beyond my control I was kept in 
ignorance of the fact that my colleague Commons had turned upon 
m.e until Jong after tlie Twenty-One had had their meeting and all 
the reports had been made public. To set out giving a detailed and 
convincing correction of Investigator Commons' deviations from 
the plain facts was not possible until my recent return, my papers 
relating to our work in common being in New York. 

When I left for Europe it Avas with the feeling that all was 
well with my Civic Federation duties. They were over and I was 
relieved. The Manager had expressed, verbally and in writing, only 
satisfaction at my course. The Chairman of the Five, my colleagues 
of that committee, and the Chairman of the Twenty-One — with all 
these gentlemen I was on excellent terms. My sole regret was that 
I could not continue waiting indefinitely, as I had during months 
waited, for the final meeting of the Twenty-One, when the general 
report was to be adopted. 



S THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

I had the week before sent Investigator Commons the man- 
liscript of m}^ own review of our joint report. I was not sensible 
of giving him Just cause for offense in anything I had therein writ- 
ten. He had been made aware of our special differences in views, 
cither as they had been developed during our investigations or while 
we were discussing them afterward. I had so frequently respected 
his wishes in minor matters, such as phraseology or arrangement, in 
our report that I took it for granted he would continue to proffer 
freely any suggestions tending to end our work in harmony, if not 
in unity. A remonstrance as to the paragraph on his practical pol- 
iticians would have received my earnest attention. So I went away 
looking forward to having his comments on my review in a few 
weeks. And a copy of his own review of our joint report, I felt 
certain, would soon follow. 

In truth, as to this last-named expectation, no doubt ever en- 
tered my mind. Sundry of Investigator Commons' doings had 
more or less at times disturbed my confidence in him. But every 
man of all the pairs of investigators in our corps, both Americans 
and British, had assented to an agreement not to publish anything, 
nor even to submit anything to the Twenty-One, until his colleague 
had read what he had written and the two had tried to come to- 
gether in case of difference. The good features of this pact were re- 
ferred to daily among the investigators while working at the Lon- 
don hotel. By discussing each other's writings a single joint report 
in each case might be arrived at, crudities might be cleared away, 
errors corrected, omissions prevented. And in case of divergent re- 
ports language offensive to either side could be avoided. I had seen 
our experts at work striving for the happy term clothing the idea 
of each; I had read lists of corrections one had made out for an- 
other; I was witness to a consequent emulation in carrying out our 
good resolve. This manly endeavor for concord and exact truth 
was to help lift the reports to a high plane. To the very finishing 
touch of his task every one concerned observed his contract with his 
colleague except Investigator Commons. I never received word 
from him after I sailed from Xew York, except that on ^lay 13 Dr. 
Maltbie wrote me : Investigator Commons "says that he will send 
3'ou a carbon copy immediately after it is finished." He has now 
known for nearly a year that I hold him as a violator of his word, 
and he has given no explanation. 

The first copy I saw of Investig-'ator Commons' attack on me 
reached me September 1. The Committee of Twenty-One had met 
and adopted its report June 10. Proof copies of the various reports 
had previously been mailed to the members of the Twenty-One from 
Dr. Maltbie's office by a secretary or an assistant. I received all of 
them, through my peraianent European address, except Investiga- 
tor Commons' review. This may have been sent, by mistake in the 
editor's office, to the Clothing Trades Bulletin, to be mingled with 
its hundreds of exchanges, sometimes opened regardless of the ad- 
dress, or bv accident it may never have been mailed me at all. 

A Xew York friend sent me in July a newspaper clipping, m 
which occurred the ''personal explanation" directed against me 
"with the greatest reluctance" by Investigator Commons. I was as- 
tounded when I read it. I at once sent the Civic Federation Mana- 
ger a statement as to the points raised, which later I withdrev/ while 



THE FATE OF THE ABSENT. 9 

awaiting a complete cop}^ of Investigator Commons' article or news 
of his elimination of the personalities directed against me. I wrote 
a request that a letter be inserted somewhere in the forthcoming 
volumes of the reports, saying that I promised yet to reply. When 
this request reached the editor the forms containing the labor r^^- 
views had been printed. 

Thus, circumstances l)e}^ond me, one with another, contributed 
in giving my one-time colleague a free field in which to parade his 
virtues as investigator, while I was far awa}^, uninformed. 

Had I received Investigator Commons' review in time I would 
have re-crossed the ocean to expose him before the Twenty-One and 
the public. 

But, what is more to the point now, I should also without ques- 
tion have been obliged to withdraw my signature from whatever 
passages of our joint report were entirely of his authorship. Having 
violated his contract to put me before any one else in possession of 
his review, as I had put him in possession of mine, he could no 
longer expect me to accept any of his statements not verified by my- 
self. My signature being thus contingent on his acting in good faith, 
my right to withdraw it was vested in me up to the moment that, 
all observances of our agreement being respected and both parties 
satisfied, our joint report and separate reviews should go to the pub- 
lic. And now that he broke that agreement in my absence it would 
be an imbecility to assume that it is still binding on me. 

I have therefore within the last few months gone to his origi- 
nal sources and — to employ one of the phrases of his professional 
patter — "checked up" some of his grosser misrepresentations, not 
only in his review, but in those parts of the joint report in which 
I had accepted his w^ord as fact, and I now give the truth regarding 
them as I proceed. 

HOW INVESTIGATOR COMMONS DELIBERATELY FALSL 
FIED VITAL FACTS. 

Investigator Commons, in his review, makes statements respect- 
ing crucial points that are in direct variance with the truth as he 
in some cases ascertained it, or in other cases could have ascertained 
it by going to the proper sources. Following are striking instances : 

I. 

Page 90, speaking of Glasgow: "In the midst of this socialistic 
tide, two anti-municipal ownership associations were organized — 
the Citizens' Union and The Eate-Payers' Federation. They started 
an active agitation, and, along with other influences, the tide of mu- 
nicipalization has been checked or stopped. We were led to believe 
that from these two associations we could secure information that 
would correct the universal indorsement of municipal ownership 
found elsewhere in Glasgow, but were surprised to find that both 
associations indorsed all that had been done in municipalizing tram- 
ways, electricity, gas, and water. They only opposed the municipal- 
ization of other undertakings competitive in character. No more 
conclusive indorsement of the success of municipal ownership in 
Glasgow could have been brought to our attention," etc. 

This tardy "indorsement," sure to come from converted an- 
tagonists, has long been an alluring idea with Municipalists and 
Socialists. Despite itself the opposition is to be won over every- 



10 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

where by the brilliancy of the communistic successes achieved. In- 
vestigator Commons wished to make this point for Glasgow in our 
joint report, but I asked him to produce his evidence. He spoke of 
the notes of the stenographer at the meeting between the Glasgow 
anti-municipal representatives and our Commission, as well as of 
the minutes of the Twenty-One's secretary, but he never produced 
his desired testimony. Xext he introduced this "indorsement'' in an 
instalment of a proposed joint summary, as he termed it, wdiich he 
sent to me in Xew York from [Madison, I marked out the word 
"indorsed'^ in the places it occurred and substituted "acquiesced." 
He dissented. On several such differences we gave up the project 
of a joint review. Xot one member of the Glasgow Citizens' Union 
or Rate-Payers' Federation "indorsed" to us the municipalization 
of the city's gas, electricity or tramways. Secretary Eobert Bird, as 
the spokesman, and other members of the Citizens' Union and the 
Federation, met members of our Commission at the Central Hotel 
in Glasgow, June 4. My own notes are the fullest that exist regard- 
ing this meeting. In explaining the purpose of the two organiza- 
tions, Secretary Bird dwelt on their opposition, in theory and prac- 
tice, to the municipal telephone, now defunct, to the unnecessary 
municipal housing scheme that had cost £750,000, while private 
capital could have done better work at a lower social cost, to mis- 
applications of the Common Good fund, and to the numerous muni- 
cipal ventures fostered by Socialists and municipal communists. 
When asked as to gas, tramw^ays and electricity. Secretary Bird said 
his two organizations were not actually opposing them, but accept- 
ing them as they stood, were opposing extensions "on their fringe" 
that entered upon legitimate competitive fields. The gas undertak- 
ing should not deal in gas stoves and gasoliers, the electricity depart- 
ment in fittings and the like. When the tramways department set 
out in 1903 to make extensions in the surroimding country districts 
the Eate-Payers' Federation compelled it to give service first to 
sections of the city "that were crying for it," and the same body of 
citizens endeavored to prevent the cost of street alterations or re- 
pairs made plainly for the benefit of the tramways from Ijeing 
charged to the city treasury in general. Such statements as these 
w^ere construed by Investigator Commons as his sought-for con- 
clusive "indorsement" of the municipal operation of the three utili- 
ties in question. But if he had pursued the subject further, as did 
others of the Commission at the time, he Avould have seen clearly 
that the Citizens' Union w^as fighting the whole municipalization 
programme. 

I interviewed last April on this subject Mr. Arthur Kay, who, 
as all Glasgow knows, is the leader in both the Citizens' Union and 
the Rate-Payers' Federation. He said: "Mr. Commons' statement 
as to this indorsement of ours is totally incorrect. We merely ac- 
cept these existing municipal undertakings he mentions as ^faits 
accomplis.' As you put it, we acquiesce in w^hat is not a live issue, 
just as we live under imperial laws of a century's standing which 
just at present are beyond correction in practical life. The mem- 
bers of our two organizations believe our tramways would be more 
justly — as regards other traffic — and better administered by a com- 
pany holding a license from the Corporation than by the Corpora- 
tion itself; and if the Electric Light and Power undertaking had 



CRUCIAL FACTS. II 

been worked with the Electric Tramway undertaking, botli under 
license from the Corporation [municipality] experts agree that the 
result would have been more efficiency and less cost. The cleanli- 
ness and efficiency of our tramway system in Glasgow do not seem 
to me in any way to excel those of the privately owned tubes in 
London." 

At a meeting of tramway committeemen of the Glasgow City 
Council and the tramway manager with our Commission, June 5^ 
Bailie Alexander, chairman of the committee, said: ''The Town 
Council is now agreed that the electricity for both departments 
should have been operated under one authority. There ought to 
have been one central control." 

The municipalization movement was not "universally in- 
dorsed" in Glasgow even by the radical parties. John Paul, rep- 
resenting the League for the Taxation of Land Values, a strong 
and active organization, said to me in an interview, the notes of 
which I gave to Investigator Commons: "All done, what's done? 
There's as much poverty in Glasgow as ever. The Social Democrat- 
ic Federation, at a meeting here ten years ago, upheld our munici- 
palization. But now it calls the movement municipal capitalism." 
A member of the League, for a decade a city councillor, told me 
he withdrew his support of municipalization, as its results were not 
socially good. Among other points he made was that the 15,000 
city employees of Glasgow, working for their own ends, constituted 
a menace to good government on broad lines. 

In this instance Investigator Commons, contradicting me, pub- 
lished to American readers as truth the very reverse of the truth. 

11. 

It seemed to myself and several other members of the Com- 
mission that the rise in Great Britain of the Municipal Employees' 
Association, as well as other unions made up of municipal employees. 
was significant as a growing public danger in connection with the 
development of municipal operation. As I have said, on his arri- 
val I had ready for Investigator Commons the data relative to this 
"spurious union," much of which he used in our joint report. He 
paid full attention to this aspect of municipalism, and was anx- 
iously interested in the action of the Trade Union Congress of 1906, 
which passed a resolution threatening to exclude organizations made 
up of municipal employees in mingled occupations from the sup- 
port of the trade unions. In his review (pages 98-99), he sketches 
the progress of the association, and after mentioning this action of 
the union congress, says: "Without the support of the regular 
unions the strength of the Municipal Employees' Association has 
disappeared. It was a temporary phase of the rapid increase of 
municipal ownership." 

In April, 1908, I showed this paragraph to Eichard Davies, tlie 
present general secretary of the Association, in its new central of- 
fices in London. He said, as to the disappearance of his organiza- 
tion's strength : "This is far from an accurate statement. We have 
never lost a single mi ember by this action in the trade union con- 
gress. We have now 15,000 members against 13,000 two years ago. 
Here are our reports for 1907, in comparison with those for 1906, 
whicji show an improvement in our finances. As all the organized 



12 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

working-men of this country know, we have had serious internal 
troubles, resulting in ousting the former General Secretary, who has 
since started another organization among municipal employees. Nev- 
ertheless, our present reports, which are revised by chartered ac- 
countants and are therefore correct, show that our income for 1907 
\\as more than £850 in excess of expenditures, which is better than 
the year before. We do not interfere with the unions of skilled 
tradesmen, but urge workmen of the trades employed by munici- 
palities to go into the unions of their trades. Hence, really a con- 
siderable membership of such unions, and in places almost whole 
organizations, w^hile not connected with the Municipal Employees* 
Associations, are municipal employees organized to promote our 
principle of benefiting themselves through their votes. For exam- 
ple, Mr. Commons, in mentioning (pages 41 and 49) other unions 
made up mainly of municipal employees, says that six-sevenths of 
the members of the Tramway and Vehicle Workers' Union in the 
Kingdom are in municipal employment. Thus the municipal em- 
ployees in all other forms of organization are numerically stronger 
than is the Municipal Employees' Association itself. We are get- 
ting men in the tramways departments not reached by the Tram- 
way and Vehicle Workers. Here is the financial statement for 
March, 1908, of one of our tramway branches in Manchester, which 
has 430 members, and w^e have four branches in Salford-Manches- 
ter. Of the laborers in municipal employment, nine out of ten 
belong to no trade — sewermen, scavengers, street sweepers. The 
unskilled trade unions have never got these men, and we are get- 
ting them. The joint board of unions and the Labor Party have 
given members of the Municipal Employees' Association until May 
1, 1910, to assimilate in national unions represented in the Trade 
Union Cono^ress. Changes which we have made in our rules for 
organization may set aside the present apparent differences be- 
tween us and the unions, which meantime have not attacked us. 
The fact is, the unskilled municipal employees will not organize 
in the outside unskilled unions, such as the gasworkers and dockers, 
who, with several other national unskilled workers, have added to 
their titles "and General Laborers' Union," and are open to all 
non-tradesmen. I look for a federation of government workmen 
and municipal employees. Commissioner Commons failed to under- 
stand the situation as it is regarding our organization and made 
an unfounded statement as to the disappearance of our strength. 
We have as much influence now on the election of Councilmen as 
we ever had, and it is growing. We contribute money to the elec- 
tion of Councillors favorable to us." 

I asked in 1906 many observers of public movements in Great 
Britain about the Municipal Employees' Association. The usual 
rej^ly was that its possibilities had not yet been demonstrated ; no 
man had yet come to the front in the organization who had sho\vn 
the capacity necessary for a national leader. Secretary Davies, 
who has had experience as a Leicester Town Councillor, now gives 
promise of being the man for the occasion. 

On this question again Investigator Commons wrote as a fact 
what he wanted to be a fact but was demonstrably contrary to the 
fact. That municipal employees, whether teachers or tramway men, 
policemen or public building janitors, clerks or laborers, will enter 



THE MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES. 13 

into alliances for their own purposes, so far from being a "tempo- 
rary phase" of increasing municipalization, may be reckoned on 
as a fact as well settled as office seeking. The only move made by 
tlie Trades Union Congress against the Municipal Employees' Asso- 
ciation was passing an indefinite resolution, never acted on, except 
in the way of negotiations, which are pending until May 1, 1910. 

III. 

In his review (page 102) Investigator Commons alleges that 
in Newcastle, one of the places visited by our Commission, where 
private companies operate some of the public utilities, the Munici- 
pal Council is "decidedly inferior in quality and ability to others." 
His judgment of the Council of Sheffield, where the gas is supplied 
by a company, is equally characterized by antipathy. The reckless- 
ness of such opinions may be inferred from the fact that Investiga- 
tor Commons spent, all told, less than one week in these two cities 
together. Of Newcastle he says : "An equivocal class of labor agi- 
tators takes advantage of the situation to get elected to the Coun- 
cil." Of Sheffield he has this: "In that town there is a peculiar 
inducement for the eminent business men in charge of the gas com- 
pany to look with approval on the election of inferior Councillors, 
because the Council elects three of its members as directors of th.e 
company. The strength of the company is seen in the incompetency 
of these municipal directors, who are kept in ignorance of essen- 
tial details of its affairs. With Councillors of this inferior type, 
and with the indifference of business men to the management of 
municipal affairs, the result is seen in the absence of any protest 
against practices which are undermining the municipal undertak- 
ings." 

I showed the foregoing passage to two members of the Parlia- 
mentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress (corresponding 
to the Executive Council, American Federation of Labor). One 
of them, a member of the Newcastle Council, could hardly be ex- 
pected to give a reply, though he is one of the most popular and 
highly respected Labor members of Parliament. The other, C. W. 
Bowerman, M. P., whose duties on the Parliamentary Committee, 
in Parliament and the London County Council, and for many years 
as Secretary of the Typographical Union, have brought him in 
constant contact with the office-holding and other union officials 
of Great Britain, said: "I have never heard one word against the 
Labor members of the Newcastle and Sheffield Councils." He men- 
tioned several of his acquaintances among them. "Such inferior 
Councillors as are referred to by Commissioner Commons would 
be knoAvn to all of us," he continued. "They are not known, be- 
cause there are not any. I consider that an unfair report." I men- 
tioned Alderman Uttley, the only Sheffield Labor Councillor a gas 
director. Mr. Bowerman said: "He is one of the responsible men 
in the Hearts of Oak, a great popular national insurance associa- 
tion, and as a citizen has an unimpeachable standing." 

Hanbury Thomas, Managing Director of the Sheffield Com- 
pany, said : 

"That portion of Professor Commons' article which referred 
to this company was not submitted to myself or an official of the 
company for correction, and I may say that I have read with sur- 



14 THE Cn^IC FEDEKATIOX LABOR REPORT. 

prise and amusement the rather remarkable deductions he has ar- 
rived at from information given bv this company to the Commis- 
sioners. 

^•'The idea that the Gas Company, who are the largest rate- 
payers in Sheffield, should look with favor on the election of in- 
ferior Councillors is absolutely ridiculous. If the Professor were 
a business man he would know that business men of high capacity 
are far more easy to get on with on a Board than men of small ex- 
perience. 

"I am pleased to say that the City Council has always paid 
this company the compliment of sending good men to represent 
them on our Board. For many j^ears Alderman Gainsford — a Col- 
liery proprietor, and Chairman of the Derwent Valley "Water 
Board, which is a huge scheme for supplying water to Sheffield, 
Leicester, Derby and one or two other towns — was a Nominee Di- 
rector, and only recently resigned because his multifarious duties 
prevented his having the time to give that amount of attention to 
the Gas Company's business that he desired to. Alderman Batty 
Langley is a timber merchant in a large way of business, and is a 
Member of Parliament for the Attercliffe Division of Sheffield. Al- 
derman Stuart Uttley is a Trade Secretary, and I may say one of 
the most respected men of his class, a man of sound common sense, 
and certainly not a Socialist. He was for some years Chairman of 
the Highway Committee. It is certainly news to me that he has 
had more to do than any other Director in fixing the hours of labor 
and the rates of wages paid to the employees of the company. It has 
always been our custom to pay good wages, recognizing that there- 
by we insured good service, which has all helped to bring the com- 
pany into its present prosperous condition. 

"With regard to the City Council generally, I am sure it will 
compare favorably with that of any other city in the United King- 
dom. We have men in it of very high capacity, who are leading 
members in their various businesses and professions, and Sheffield 
is generally regarded throughout the country as a go-ahead town. 

"With respect to the Gas Company, I am pleased to say that 
its management stands high in the opinion of the City Council, 
and also of the whole of the inhabitants, who recognize that the 
company as been carried on as much for the benefit of the consum- 
ers as for the shareholders. The exceptionally low price at which 
gas is now sold, viz.. Is. 4d. down to Is. per 1,000 cubic feet, is am- 
ple proof of this. Our Chairman, Sir Frederick Mappin, has for 
many years been looked upon as the foremost of Sheffield's citizens. 
He has been Mayor, Master Cutler, Member of Parliament for one 
of the Divisions, and Chairman of the Technical Department of 
the University (in fact, he was the making of this Department), 
and has occupied every position of honor it was possible for the 
town to place him in. Sheffield is his native place, and it has never 
possessed a son who has been more disinterestedly devoted to its 
^velfare. 

"I think these facts are sufficient in themselves to refute the 
statement that there have been any practices on the part of the com- 
panv calculated to undermine municipal undertakings. 

^ "The Professor's other comments are equally unfortunate, and 
were I to go through them in detail I should find myself obliged 
to contradict most of the conclusions he has drawn." 



DEFICIENCIES. 15 

IV. 

Investigator Commons' statements against the Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne Gas Company brought out these comments from W. 
Doig Gibb, its Chief Engineer: 

''The sentence (page 102), — 'The presence of private gas, 
electricity and water companies, with their representatives in the 
Council, prevents the leading business men from interesting them- 
selves in the success of the municipal government, while an equivo- 
cal class of labor agitators takes advantage of the situation to get 
elected on the Council' — is absolute nonsense. I have never heard 
such an opinion expressed by any one in Newcastle. 

"It is next to impossible to have Councillors of any standing 
without a few of them being interested in the local semi-public 
enterprises, such as the gas company here is. But when any busi- 
ness connected with their company is being discussed in the Coun- 
cil Chamber the interested members very seldom take any part, and 
then only by way of explanation. Indeed, the Secretary and myself 
think that the gas company is probably handicapped by having 
two of their directors on the Council, inasmuch as they are both 
sensible men, and if not interested would vote for common sense 
proposals. As it is, they neither influence the Council nor vote. 

"The gas company at Newcastle does not pay its organized 
common labor the same minimum as the municipality (page 107). 
One or two isolated cases may have been taken to prove this, but the 
general practice is undoubtedly that the gas company pa3^s from 
two to four shillings per man per week more. 

" 'The presence of a strong labor organization' (page 110) has 
nothing whatever to do with stokers working five hours for eight 
hours' pay. As a matter of fact, the stokers work as follows : Each 
eight-hour shift is divided into four periods ('charges'), each con- 
sisting of three-quarters of an hour work and one hour and a quar- 
ter rest. Thus in eight hours three hours is actually working time, 
and at the end of the fourth period of two hours the men are not 
kept to take their rest of an hour and a quarter, but can go home. 
The eight hours nominal shift, therefore, consists of three hours* 
work and six and three-quarters hours in all at the works. The 
men are paid by 'charges' and not by hours. No stoker could work 
continually for eight hours, and the Newcastle custom is the or- 
dinary one throughout all gas works, whether union shops or othc]-- 
wise. 

"After inquiries I am unable to find that Professor Commons 
submitted any manuscript or proof to any official of this company 
for correction. It is difficult to check his figures, but I am not in 
agreement with many of them." 

Investigator Commons' bold travesty of scientific observation 
in these instances brings him to print rash, foolish and evidently 
forejudged conclusions as facts he had ascertained and presumably 
verified. 

MAKING OUT A CASE AGAINST A COMPANY, NO MAT- 
TER WHAT THE FACTS. 

Investigator Commons was the sole writer of the sub-chapter, 
"Profit Sharing or Copartnership (pages 82-88, "Eeports of Ex- 
perts — United Kingdom"), and he is the authority for references 



IC THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

elsewhere in the joint report to the South Metropolitan Gas Com- 
pany, London. ]\Iy permission to him to proceed without me in 
this and several other cases of private undertakings came about 
chiefly through his baseless assumption, largely by insinuation, that 
somehow I was expected to defend the acts, questionable or other- 
wise, of the companies under investigation. To this point I shall 
refer hereafter, but enough to say here that when Investigator 
Commons on one occasion in London alluded to this idea I told 
liim to go ahead and give all the evidence he had found of oppres- 
sions of labor by the British companies and I would accept what- 
ever he wrote. I added that of course he would set down such 
facts on honor and when published they would have to stand the 
criticism of interested readers. I was busy at the time with the 
management of the Commission's work, so I allowed him free rein 
in gathering material against the British companies. He was an 
adept in presenting such matter with a judicial pose; besides, as 
in social standing he was a university professor and therefore pre- 
sumptively an American gentleman, why not trust him? In re- 
flecting on my turning over this work to Investigator Commons I 
have at times questioned myself as to whether there ought not to 
have been with us a third labor investigator — a representative of 
the employers, to guard over their rights and interests at each step 
in the inquiry. To this my reply at this stage is, first, that I hoped 
for a fair degree of foresight from Investigator Commons in his 
unrestricted procedures, that he might not be tripped up after- 
wards, and, secondly, that I knew if he proved notably unfaithful 
I must give publicity to his shortcomings. That is what I am 
obliged to do now. 

Before Investigator Commons reached London I had inter- 
viewed Will Thorne, Secretary of the Gas Makers' Xational L^nion, 
and Pete Curran, their organizer, getting from them their version 
of the South Metropolitan strike of 1889 and the development 
since of that company's labor copartnership. I had also had com- 
munication with the company's officials and given them our book 
of labor questions — Schedule 11. x\t our Commission's London 
office, engaged in occasional employment in transcribing and con- 
densing legal and other reports, was a Mr. S. D. Shallard, a Fabian 
editor and lecturer, and from him I heard the Socialist history of 
the labor developments at the South Metropolitan Works. In turn 
afterward Investigator Commons saw all these same men, of both 
sides. He let me know, from time to time, that he was heaping up 
facts, important ones, in the South Metropolitan case, greatly to 
the company's discredit. When, in October following, at Madison,, 
he gave me his instalment of the report on this subject it seemed 
to me easily possible to get up what he had Avritten, aside from the 
points given us in the company's replies and publications, by sim- 
ply quoting the union Socialists Thorne and Curran and the vis- 
ionary Shallard. He had managed to get from outsiders some- 
where allegations of facts or interpretations of passages in the com- 
pany's reports, to show that its benefit and profit-sharing schemes 
were methods b}^ which the employees were oven\'orked and in im- 
portant respects tricked out of the benefits and compensations due 
them by law. This latter point, insisted on by him as demonstrable 
by his statistics, modified greatly my own favorable estimate of the 



THE SOUTH METROPOLITAN COMPANY. 17 

company's co-operative features. Bat he had not shown his matter 
to the company for its version of possibly inaccurate or controvert- 
ible statements. This I myself have done recently — April, 1908. 
The officials of the company had already "checked up" Investigator 
Commons' errors on capital points. Following are examples : 

Page 84, "Reports of Experts — United Kingdom"; "In 1889- 
the company, in accepting the eight-hour system, had to meet a- 
greatly increased cost of labor. The change from twelve hours to- 
eight, at the same rates of pay per day, meant an increase of 50^ 
per cent, in the cost of labor in the retort house. In order to over- 
come this handicap the management endeavored in many ways ta 
increase the amount of work, such as making the scoops larger, de- 
tailing men to keep them in repair and to see that they were kept 
full, and shortening the periods of rest/' etc. To this the reply of 
the company is that "it was quite the other way. The men, instead 
of having more work put upon them, were constantly refusing to 
do work that they had theretofore done." Scoops were not made- 
larger; men had always been detailed to dress scoops even before 
profit-sharing was started. Machinery was introduced which les- 
sened the manual labor. Conditions as to periods of rest, etc., are 
the same now as in the non-profit-sharing companies. But no 
other company gives, as does the South Metropolitan, the many 
benefits of profit-sharing, plus those of its various forms of benev- 
olent associations, plus aftei ten months' services a week's holiday" 
with pay to every man and boy, and after three years' services the 
same holiday with two weeks' pay. Instead of a growing oppres- 
sion of the company's laborers there has been constant ameliora- 
tion in their condition. The holidays were in vogue before the 
strike, also the superannuation and sick benefits. The benefits of 
the sick fund are now 12 shillings per week for thirteen weeks, & 
shillings for another thirteen weeks, contribution of workmen 3d. 
per week; superannuation 3d. per week — 10 shillings per week at 
the age of 65 years and 25 years' service. Additions to pay since the 
strike have been, first, hours per week reduced from 60 to 54 with 
an increase of ^d. per hour; secondly, a few years ago an addi- 
tional quarter of an hour for breakfast, with no decrease of pay; 
the men are paid for 54 hours and only work 52% hours ; and third- 
ly, last year an additional %d. per hour, given to a large portion 
of the men. There is no need for any man to lose any time during- 
the year unless he chooses. Christmas Day and Good Friday are 
paid for to the whole force. The employees pay but Is. 8d. for their 
gas to the public's 2s. 3d. per 1,000 feet. They get their coal and 
coke at cost, delivered by the company's vans. They have company- 
garden allotments, free to all, at Old Kent Road, Greenwich, and 
East Greenwich. The average holding of company stock and sav- 
ings per man is now £60. 

The company makes all promotions from within its force. In 
the offices are thirty-six sons of workmen. When slot meters were 
introduced the 140 new collectors necessary were selected from the 
working force. The contributions of the company in 1907 were : 
To copartnership, workmen only, £38,663 (including officials^ 
£45,590); workmen's accident fund, £1,264; workmen's superan- 
nuation fund, £4,428; workmen's sick and burial fund, £1,615; 
cost of holidays given workmen (about), £16,000; to benevolent 
societies, hospitals, etc., £1,008. Through the company's building 
society its workmen have built or bought 230 houses. 



18 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

Page 86, Investigator Commons: "The stock [of profit-sharing 
employee] can be withdrawn of sold only when the employee 
leaves the service of the company." Correction: "The members 
can withdraw their stock to buy a house, as many have done, or in 
any case of imforeseen unusual necessary expenditure not to be met 
by the weekly wage. The men who have dra\\Ti out to go to Amer- 
ica have each landed there with a round sum in his possession." 

Page 87, Investigator Commons : "The Copartnership Commit- 
tee is simply a means of registering the will of the company 
through its chairman, and the claim that it is a joint committee 
with equal representation is a fiction as well understood by the 
workmen as by its authors." (Investigator Commons originally 
ended this sentence with the words "is false" after "representa- 
tion"; on my suggestion he adopted the roundabout phrase in- 
stead). Eeply by the company's speakers: "*^^The only foremen 
w^ho are elected as company representatives are the head foremen af 
each station, who are in the position of officers, and as such would 
not be eligible for election b}' the workmen. There never has been 
any attempt at interference with the freedom of the men in select- 
ing and electing their representatives. Only very rarely have they 
elected a sub-foreman. All wage-earners, which includes many of 
the foremen, are eligible to serve if they possess the qualification. 
The sentence as to the 'fiction' is very unfair and quite incorrect." 
The three workmen directors of the company united in saying: 
"The paragraph is a libel on the comm.ittee. We contradict every 
word of it." 

Page 89, Investigator Commons: "The South Metropolitan 
scheme [of sick and death benefits] is the oldest, having been es- 
tablished for officers as early as 1842, and being extended to differ- 
ent classes of workmen at different times," etc. It was the work- 
men's sick and burial fund that was established in 1842 ; and their 
superannuation fund in 1855, while the latter for the officers was 
started in 1890. 

Same page — As to the mutual benefit schemes: "Membership 
is nominally voluntary but actually compulsory." Eeply : "Practi- 
cally all the workmen contribute to the accident fund because the 
benefits considerably exceed in the aggregate those obtainable un- 
der the Workmen's Compensation Act, and they always get the 
compensation without difficulty or uncertainty, while the subscrip- 
tion by the workmen is nominal ; it used to be a half-penny a week, 
but it now ranges from Id. a month to Id. a quarter. The sub- 
scribers to the sick fund are fevv^er than to the accident fund, and 
still less to the superannuation fund. Thus it is seen that member- 
ship is really voluntary." 

Page 90, Investigator Commons : "Engineers and heads of de- 
partments twice a year examine their lists of workmen and put on 
the fund all who are eligible." Eeply: "Workmen are sim^ply no- 
tified that they can join if they like. It is a purely voluntary act, 
as the figures just given show." 

Page 94, after referring to the intervention of the Eegistrar of 
Friendly Societies possible in case workmen send him a formal 
complaint that a benefit scheme is being violated or not fairly ad- 
ministered. Investigator Commons writes : "This provision is en- 
:tirely worthless unless the workmen are protected from dismissal by 



THE SOUTH METROPOLITAN COMPANY. 19 

a trade union or otherwise. Consequently the cases of inadequate 
compensation at the South Metropolitan Works, compared with 
what the act would require, do not provoke public complaint on the 
part of the workmen or investigation by the Registrar, The admin- 
istration of the fund is under charge of the Copartnership Com- 
mittee, which, as shown above, is a pretended joint committee of the 
company and workmen, but really a committee of the company." 
Reply : "This is unfair and untrue. Further, no man has ever been 
dismissed from the company for his action regarding its benevolent 
or profit-sharing schemes." 

Page 95, relative to legal compensation for injuries caused by 
"serious and wilful misconduct" of a member of a benefit scheme, 
Investigator Commons says: "In the South Metropolitan scheme 
the employer and not the court is the final judge." Reply: "Not 
true. The twelve workmen jurymen are left absolutely alone to 
decide on and write their verdict. The jury do not hesitate to 
award blame to officer or workman if deserved." 

Same page. Investigator Commons: "In one case certified to 
before the departmental committee a man who cleaned machinery 
while it was in motion was debarred [from company benefits] be- 
cause he had wilfully done w^hat he had instructions not to do." 
Reply: "He could recover nevertheless his legal compensation." 

Pages 96 and 97, Investigator Commons: "Under the Work- 
men's Compensation Act, special protection is thrown about the 
medical examination" (of an injured employee) . . . "In the 
South Metropolitan scheme the only doctor provided when the 
claim is made is the company doctor, who also acts as surgeon to 
the sick fund." Then follows, as if a typical illustration, the de- 
tailed description of the case of a brickla3^er, whose complaints 
against the company are still harped upon by its critics. He was 
on the funds for thirty-eight weeks and then complained that by law 
he should receive a higher grade of compensation. He did not get 
it and protested. Investigator Commons stands up for him as if 
protecting a group of the downtrodden. Reply: "His fellow work- 
men began to regard this man as a malingerer as eight months 
passed by. He was examined not only by the company doctor, but 
by his club doctor and a doctor of hiis own choice. A few weeks 
after this protest he accepted the verdict of these doctors and tiie 
workmen's jur}^, and came back to work. He is working now for 
the company, the same as if he had never complained against its 
treatment. So far from being typical, this was the only disputed 
case ever up. Why cite it and overlook the many in which work- 
men have been dealt with liberally? An instance: Laborer Dyball 
some years ago lost a leg and the heel of the other foot in an acci- 
dent at the works. By law he could not have got more than £300. 
Up to April, 1908, he had received more than £700 and was still 
receiving £1 per week." 

Page 97, Investigator Commons, as one of his counts against 
the compan}^, cites that three of its twenty-three widow pensioners 
were paid less than the minimum stipulated in the rules. Reply : 
"One of the three is a widow with no claim on the fund, as the 
fatal accident to her husband happened in 1895, three years before 
the fund was started. The other two are children, for whom ample 
provision was made." 



20 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

Page 98, Investigator Commons : "Their [the employees'] con- 
tributions have paid all the extra benefits which the [South Mef;- 
ropolitan Company's] scheme provides and an additional amount of 
£380 as a contributon in aid of the company in paying the com- 
pensation for which under the [Workmen's Compensation] Act the 
company is responsible." Reply : "Instead of the employees paying 
£380 more in the eight years than the extra benefit received it was 
actually over £1,000 the other way, if the doctors' fees had been 
properly charged. The sick fund paid about £1,500 that should 
have been charged to the accident fund." 

Page 43, Investigator Commons: "The twelve-hour and two- 
shift system [instead of eight hours and three shifts] was restored 
in two stations by vote of the unorganized gas workers, on the 
ground that the increased amount of work was too much for eight 
hours." Investigator Commons fails to tell his readers that the 
twelve-hour shifts at one of the two stations, which together em- 
ploy about one-third the entire force, are worked in the winter only, 
when the three shifts of the summer force all find work with the 
change in demand. The fewer retorts in use in the summer give 
the hands work in the eight-hour shifts. 

On July 18, 1906, Sir George Livesey met the Commission at 
the company's offices, 709 Old Kent Eoad, Investigator Commons^ 
being present. I took full notes of Sir George's remarks and re- 
plies to questions, had them afterward typewritten, and gave Inves- 
tigator Commons a copy. He could therefore not plead that he wa& 
not aware of these statements by Sir George regarding the twelve 
(really eleven) hour shifts: 

"There are three shifts at Old Kent Eoad and Yauxhall Works, 
and two at Greenwich. At Eotherhithe the men work two shifts of 
about 11 hours in winter and three of eight hours in summer. The 
two-shift man does about one-fifth more work than the three-shift 
man. He is paid in proportion to the amount of coal handled. The 
men at Eotherhithe say they would prefer two shifts throughout 
the year. The two shifts were started about six years ago." 

Page 110, Volume 1, in Ms review of the Labor Eeport ("La- 
bor and Politics"), Investigator Commons writes: "This twelve- 
hour system [at two of the South Metropolitan Company's stations], 
resulting from the smashing of the union and the overwork of the 
employees, is approved in some quarters as a 'genuine example of 
co-operation.' " This sneer bears reference to what I had written 
in my review respecting labor conditions at the company's works 
(page 61) : "Its employees' stock in the company represents a larger 
sum than is similarly possessed by any equal number of laborers in 
England, and its provisions for siclmess, death and old age are un- 
usual. Xinety-odd per cent, of the employees of these works save 
something. A Labor Liberal member of Parliament said of the 
Company to one of our committee : 'A gas worker can nowhere get a 
better job.' The Co-operative L'nion accepts the works as a genu- 
ine example of co-operation." 

Investigator Commons makes much of the strike of the ga& 
workers in 1889 and joins with the embittered leaders of that strike 
and the Socialists in' regarding the noteworthy results of the com- 
pany's labor copartnership methods as simply the outcome of union 
wrecking and labor sweating. He fails to give a true account any- 
where of the friendly attitude of the company toward trade union- 



THE SOUTH METROPOLITAN COMPANY. 21 

ism or of the attitude of trade unions (other than that of the gas 
workers) toward the company. 

Nearly a decade ago, Sir George Livesey, the head of the gas 
company (Oct. 14, 1899), at a Labor Association conference at 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, referred to the causes of the strike of 1889 
and his attitude toward unions. After remarking that it was then 
twenty-five years since he suggested the sliding scale to identify 
the interests of gas shareholders and gas consumer, he said: "The 
relations of the South Metropolitan Gas Company with their work- 
men had always been of a friendly character until after the grant- 
ing of the eight-hour or three-shift system to the stokers in 1889. 
This had been offered to but not adopted by the men, both in 1887 
and 1888; consequently, when the request was made, in the summer 
of 1889, on the instigation of the Gas Stokers' Union, it was grant- 
ed at once. All went well for a few weeks only ; the union had got 
all that it asked so easily that further demands — some trifling, some 
serious — were made and granted rather than risk a strike, which 
was imminent at any moment. In October, 1889, a suggestion 
was made, at the Board, that it would be better to make friends of 
the men than to fight them. The Directors agreed, and the same 
afternoon the outline of the profit-sharing scheme was explained to 
ten or twelve leading workmen. They all approved, but those who 
were members of the Gas Workers' IJnion said they must consult 
the delegates before committing themselves to its acceptance. The 
union refused its sanction, demanding that the profit-sharing 
money should be given in wages, thus excluding all the stokers — 
about two-thirds of the company's workmen. At the time it was 
felt this put an end to the matter; but the yard men and mechan- 
ics let it be known that they did not see why they should be deprived 
of a good thing because it was refused by others. This was re- 
ported to the next meeting of the Board, when it was resolved to 
offer participation to any workmen, many or few, who chose to ac- 
cept it, leaving every man perfectly free to accept or reject it, with 
no restriction or condition as to membership of the union. The 
stokers to a man refused, the others — about 1,000 in number — ac- 
cepted within a fortnight. The act or condition of acceptance was 
the signing of an agreement for twelve months, with a proviso that 
any man might leave on a week's notice, with the consent of the 
engineer. 

"The agreements were signed during the month of November, 
and toward the end of the month three stokers signed. . The union 
demanded their ^^removaP, which was refused, and two days later, 
on the 4th of December, 1889, the further demand was made for 
^the removal from the works' of all the men who had signed agree- 
ments and the abolition of the profit-sharing scheme. This demand 
could not be complied with, and, being refused, the union gave a 
week's notice for each of the 2,000 stokers on the following day, but 
some of the notices were forged. . . . The company, however, 
neither before nor during the strike (of which the cost and losses 
direct and indirect exceeded £100,000) made any objection to the 
employment of members of the Gas Workers' IJnion, or to their 
joining the profit-sharing arrangement; but after the strike ende*3, 
and the company had agreed to take back unionists to fill any va- 
cancies, the secretary of the union said publicly that they made a 



22 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

mistake in giving a week's notice, and he warned the consumers of 
London that they would not give a week^s notice next time, which 
threat was met by the company declaring that in order to protect 
the consumers of London they would not employ members of that 
union. This had no connection whatever with profit-sharing, and 
in proof I may say that when introducing a similar system at the 
Crystal Palace District Gas Works in 1894 the men were distinctly 
and emphatically told that they Avere perfectly free to continue 
members of the Gas AYorkers' or any L'nion, and that they, or any 
of them — for there must be no compulsion of any kind — were 
equally free to accept or reject the profit-sharing scheme, and so 
it remains at those works to this day. These statements of facts 
without comment are given because I wish to conceal nothing, i^ 
life-long association with workmen has shown me that abo\'e all 
things they like to be dealt with fairly and squarely and honestly, 
and I have found that Avhere confidence is given it will be re- 
turned." 

It is to be borne in mind that there never has been any dis- 
pute at the company's works with the 1,000 yard men or the hun- 
dreds of the skilled workmen of various trades. These have been em- 
ployed at better than union conditions. There are engineers and 
other skilled tradesmen on the superannuation list not only of the 
com.pany but of their trade unions. Excepting for a brief period 
after the strike the works have always been open, as they are now, 
to union gas makers. 

Leading trade unionists of England have attended Labor Co- 
partnership Association conferences with Sir George Livesey and 
spoken from the same platform with him and commended his com- 
pany's labor copartnership. Among these are D. J. Shackleton, M. 
P., the leading spokesman in the House of Commons for organized 
labor; Alexander Wilkie, M. P., Xational Secretary of the Ship- 
wrights' L'nion (both of whom have been sent as delegates from 
the British trade union Congress to Conventions of the American 
Federation of Labor) ; Hugh Boyle, President of the Xorthumber- 
land Miners' Association ; Thomas Burt, M. P., of the miners, and 
Henry Vivian, M. P., and F. Maddison, M. P., both of the Typo- 
graphical Union. The productive societies of the Labor Copart- 
nership Association noAV number more than one hundred, and all, 
including five gas companies, recognize trade union requirements. 
Another five gas companies have adopted the system this year, and 
several others intend to follow\ 

Profit-sharing and Labor Copartnership are harmonious in 
their relations with the British Co-operative movem.ent, though not 
strictly a part of it. In a letter to me, January 15, 1908, J. C. 
Gray, General Secretary, Co-operative Union, the executive head 
of the united co-operative societies of the Kingdom, writes : "I be- 
lieve the South Metropolitan profit-sharing scheme is quite genu- 
ine and advantageous to the workmen." 

On Wednesday, April 22, the present year, I attended a meet- 
ing of the company officials and over 900 delegates of the men on 
the occasion of the presentation to the employees of a new hall on 
the works grounds. The men in turn presented a testimonial to 
Mr. Bush, who had just become a director after serving the com- 
pany as secretary for twenty-six years. Sir George Livesey, in a 



THE SOUTH METROPOLITAN COMPANY. 23 

speech, said the company and the men had no differences and had 
not had any in nearly two decades. Nothing was kept from the 
men. They w^ere free to elect their own three directors and their 
committeemen. Any man could make complaints if he had any. 
Both the employers and the employed of the company desired to 
show England and the world how^ to preserve peace and substitute 
thrift for unthrift, how capital and labor could join hands, and 
how laborers in an industry could become capitalists. In June 
£400,000 of the company's eight millions of capital would be held 
by its employees. The day could be foreseen when the company's 
employees might hold the majority of the stock ! So far from being 
a scheme for getting the better of the men, the company's plan 
could in time at its present rate of progress permit the men to 
rule the company. Here was the possibility of a great, practical, 
and peaceable transformation of society. 

The hearty applause and cheering that greeted these remarks 
could never have been the result of coercion or cajolery. 

Two of the three workmen directors went over Investigator 
Commons' report with me and patiently pointed out its errors. 
Apart from these men, company officials gave me the same expla- 
nations. Mr. i^ustin, the third director, has since written me his 
replies on the same points. The three parties thus replying sepa- 
rately made the same statements. Mr. Austin complains that Com- 
missioner Commons' report contained not one word of a long con- 
versation between the two in my presence in July, 1906, when Mr. 
Austin had tried to impress on Mr. Commons the value of the 
company's exertions in raising the workmen to a higher level of 
comfort and happiness, as other of the employees when questioned 
by us had done. Mr. Austin knew nothing of dismissals of w^ork- 
m^en because of their dislike of the copartnership scheme. He chal- 
lenged this statement of Investigator Commons. 

On the whole. Investigator Commons' account of the South 
Metropolitan Gas Company's labor copartnership is (1) as to va- 
rious indisputable features, a mere transcription from the com- 
pany's reports and other publications which permitted little scope 
for incorrectness; and (2) as to points obtained from partisan 
faultfinders,, misstatements and misinterpretations of the acts, spirit 
and intentions of the company wherein it is opposed by a small knot 
of extremist and Socialist enemies. The Investigator's unchecked 
bias in this matter was such as to deprive him of any chance for a 
reputation in Great Britain as a fair minded observer and recorder 
of the truth. The company's achievements, the most notable of the 
kind in the world, have been thoroughly discussed by all classes, 
and it was left to Investigator Commons to adopt view^s of them 
no longer held to-day, even in trade union circles, except by men 
forced by events to be irreconcilables. 

MANCEUVRING TO INJURE COMPANIES AND SUPPRESS 
FACTS FAVORABLE TO THEM. 

We have at this stage of our examination basis enough for 
keenly appreciating Investigator Commons' capabilities for uttering: 
false testimony, whether by audacious reversals of the truth or by 
labored perversion and obscuration. He now deserves attention as 
an adept in manoeuvring. Some of his acts in this capacity I al- 
lowed to pass by at the time I witnessed them as not to be mended 



24 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

by discussion; on others I put a charitable construction; other?, 
^again, only came well into the light after his review had been pub- 
iished. 

I. 

While I was in Chicago in September, 1906, just before going 
to Madison, one of the officers of the Chicago Edison Company 
gave me a copy of a confidential letter written by him to the Vice- 
President containing certain data, some of which was of possible 
value to our commission. This letter, of course, I turned over to 
investigator Commons, with information as to its strictly private 
^character for the time being. In Xovember I received from the 
<}ompany a communication saying that City Electrician Carroll of 
Chicago had quoted to them from this private letter of the com- 
pany, stating that Investigator Commons had given him a copy of 
it. The Chicago Edison official wrote me: "I am somewhat sur- 
prised that this report . . . should have been turned over to 
Mr. Carroll, who is not a member of the Civic Federation, especially 
"before such time as the complete report of the Xational Ci\dc Fed- 
eration was approved and published.'' The President of the Chi- 
cago Edison Company wrote a letter of formal protest to the Exec- 
aitive Manager of the Civic Federation in regard to this underhand 
"breach of faith by Investigator Commons. Even had the letter not 
been a confidential deposit with us, to hand a copy of it to a busi- 
ness rival of the company would have been discreditable to our 
Commission. 

11. 

Investigator Commons, in the opening of his review (page 
88), announces: "I shall take the report as a whole, and shall try 
to bring together all of the facts exactly as they are and in their 
true proportions." And he announces on the next page his intention 
"in weighing and interpreting the facts," to "summarize all the 
facts" — which he asserts I had failed to do. 

The most careless reader of either the labor or the other in- 
vestigators' reports in the volumes issued by the Commission muot 
have observed that nothing more valuable to America from every 
point of view came from any undertaking than the exhaustive infor- 
mation from the United Gas Improvement Company of Philadel- 
phia. Investigator Commons and I spent ten days of energetic 
work looking into the labor affairs of the company in January, 
1906. When not actually at one or other of the works or in the 
compam^'s central offices, guided by competent informants, we were 
visiting the Central Labor Union's headquarters or the offices of the 
unions which might be represented in the company's works or in 
kindred occupations. 

In no wise did we unearth anything to the companv's possible 
discredit regarding labor. Day by day our developments, instead 
of revealing a soulless corporation's neglect of the rights of work- 
ingmen, brought us convincing testimony of the company's liberal 
treatment of both office help and works forces as to wages, hours, 
methods of promotion, and the sanitation so important in the retort 
houses. But Investigator Commons could not grow enthusiastic. 
His conscience was troubled by a mysterious piece of knowledge 
which he hinted to me darkly at times and which overbalanced 
everything we saw to the company's credit. At length, when it 



THE UNITED GAS IMPROVEMENT COMPANY. 25 

came out, it was that he already knew from Professor Bemis that 
the superintendent of one of the works had stated on the witness 
stand a decade before that he had put some men at work on the so- 
licitation of city Councilmen. This is the one point of the three or 
four he touches upon in lelation to the company that is made to 
count in Investigator Commons' entire review. Yet in the mean- 
time a Avritten statement of the facts had been made by the su- 
perintendent in question (page 520, Part II, Vol. I). In the early 
'90s, during a period of industrial distress, in a force of twenty to 
forty laborers he had given alternating spells of three months to 
out-of-works of the neighborhood, among others to men recom- 
mended by their usual social spokesmen — their priests and Council- 
men. 

This one point especially is what Eeformer Commons carried 
away with him from Philadelphia to give to the people of the United 
States. The barest mention, in a brief phrase or two, is all he has 
in his review regarding the full statement printed after the joint 
labor report in which every feature of the emplo}Tnent, organiza- 
tion, conditions, and general treatment of the company's thousands 
of employees of to-day is considered. He had had far more oppor- 
tunity to know that all the facts of this statement were true than 
he had to inform himself as to the three undertakings of Glasgow, 
where he spent in all only a few working days, which receive ex- 
tended favorable notice both in the joint report and in his review. 
In the British tour he was for six weeks much in the society of the 
Third Vice-President of the Philadelphia company and two of its 
prominent operative officials, frequently hearing them describe ics 
methods by comparison with others' in response to inquiries. 

While the Commissioners were in Philadelphia in December, 
1906, Investigator Commons was by appointment several times in 
consultation with the Assistant to the Third Vice-President over the 
details to be embodied in our joint report. With that official he 
was one evening working over the very matter that appears in the 
report without his signature, leaving the task unfinished but under 
engagement to resume it next morning. He never returned; he 
resented m}- reminding him of his engagement ; he never explained 
his remissness. 

On receiving soon after from the company the manuscripts 
prepared by the various heads of departments in response to our 
schedule and verbal inquiries, I sent the package, untouched by me, 
to Investigator Commons in Madison for revision from his notes 
and other data. He returned it to me by mail February 16, unre- 
vised, writing: ^T approve of sending this out to the T^venty-One 
[as part of our joint report] provided Eowe's report is sent. . . 
This is the spirit of my understanding that we would leave the 
write-up of our report to the U. G. I., provided Eowe wrote up its 
history.*' Professor Eowe was in South America at the time ; some 
of the statements of his history referred to were spoken of by Mi*. 
Walton Clark as being such as Professor Eowe himself w^ould not 
make were he to see the evidences of their error that the company 
was prepared to furnish. I therefore proposed to Investigator Com- 
mons that I should go over the Philadelphia labor report manu- 
script first, carefully cutting out all that he and I might not be able 
to subscribe to as being pertinent, or in accordance with our notes. 



26 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

or equally reliable as the information we obtained by word of mouth 
at other undertakings. By these tests I worked the manuscript 
over. I sent it to him February 24. He had it in his hands a month 
when, March 23, he wrote me : "I hope to get the U. G. I. matter 
to you [for the printer], but I have been delayed because I wanted 
to write to Philadelphia regarding a few of the points, in order to 
see whether I could properly sign the report without having made 
a visit to Philadelphia in order to verify statements." 

Only "& few of the points" were still in doubt with him there- 
fore ten days before I sailed from ^ew York. Meantime I had 
written him that Mr. Clark would make no opposition to the pres- 
entation of Prof. Eowe's history to the Twenty-One. In my last 
letter to Investigator Commons before sailing I informed him T 
v/ould trust him to finish his revision himself. 

He never had any further communication with the company 
on the subject. After I had gone he sent the manuscript to the- 
printer with an introduction in w^hich, by saying it was prepared 
under the direction of Mr. Clark and revised by me, he evaded 
responsibility for its statements. Thenceforth he almost ignored it. 

In his review (page 107) he sums up relative to an important 
conclusion : "In the United States the minimum paid for common 
labor by the private companies is in all cases except Atlanta lower 
than that of the municipality," etc. Then he leaves Philadelphia 
out of his list of comparisons; it would destroy his thesis. (See 
reference 58 in my analysis of his review.) 

Investigator Commons' omission of the Philadelphia company 
from his review, except mainly thus to misrepresent it in his wages 
summary and in his references to political appointments, is proof 
past question that he purposely blinl?:ed the facts of the largest im- 
port to our mission w^hen they weighed against his side. This 
crime against the code of honor among investigators he could com- 
mit while advertising himself as an impartial witness and historian. 
When it is known that his misrepresentations were made in the 
circumstances just related, the reader has a measure of his capa- 
bilities as a trickster and dodger. 

III. 
Had I been within consulting distance, I should have opposed 
the omission from the joint report of a sub-chapter which, except 
the concluding sentences, had been written by me and accepted b.y 
ray colleague in Madison, October, 1906, and which had been stand- 
ing in type for months v/hen I left Xew York for Europe, April 3,. 
1907. Herewith reproduced, it related how the labor investigation 
was carried on and how the joint report took shape. I wrote this 
account in order that we as authors might not seem to be too sure 
of all of our statements, and to excuse ourselves for possible omis- 
sions, and in general to be candid with our readers. If printed, it 
would have extinguished Investigator Commons' claim : "The entire 
leport as it stands, except New Haven and Philadelphia, was writ- 
ten by myself on the basis of facts which I personally investigated." 
It was headed "The Labor Investigation" : 

"As a beginning, Messrs. Commons and Sullivan, as members of the 
Committee of Twenty-One, spent several days in Pittsburg in Novem- 
ber, 1905, during the annual convention of the American Federation of 
Labor, their purpose being to meet delegates from the cities w^hich they 



MATTER OMITTED. 2T 

were to visit in the course of tlie investigation. They began systematic 
work in Ph adelphia. January 16, 1906. Their labors m that city, Rich- 
mond Atlanta, Pittsburg and Allegheny took up the next four weeks, 
when Mr Sulivan, after being summoned to a meeting of the Com- 
mittee of Five in Philadelphia, was selected to go to Great Britain in 
Se Place of Mr. W. J. Clark, who was detained in America by press- 
lug duties wihihe company in which he is an official. Professor Com- 

Sfns re'unied to the University at M^.^Ji^^V^'^'^On M^xrch * 13 leTt 
ioined Dr M R. Maltbie in IX)ndon on March 5. On March 13, he set 
iut to open up for the investigation the undertakings in the Provinces 
tMt had bee placed on the list by the committee. He reached London 
aTin in four weeks, collection of labor data having been difficult while 
nSrsuing the important task in hand. In London, waiting on the mana- 
gers of focaf undertakings and persons influential with them contuiually 
Lternipted labor work. The office duties and the Preparations or the 
comin- of the Committee of Twenty-One, work shared with Dr. Malt- 
^e had to be attended to. The tour of the committee beginning at 
rn%lin May 29, took up nearly a month on the way to London, where 
several' weeks in July were spent in visiting plants, interviewing man- 
agers and others, and holding committee meetings Prof essor Com- 
mons, whose time on this tour was much occupied by general commit- 
Se wo7k, made a second trip to Leicester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Glas- 
gow^ Manchester and Liverpool late in July, while Mr. Sullivan with 
Dr Maltbie finished up the Commission's business in London, finally 
himself, after Dr. Maltbie's departure, attending to the details of clos- 
ing the offices and bringing the outside work and interchange of civili- 
tie's to an end Mr. Sullivan's stay in Great Britain was five months, 
of which but the smaller part could be allotted to the labor inquiry. 
Professor Commons, being detained in August and September at the 
Wisconsin University, arranged with the Committee of Five that Mr. 
Sullivan alone should visit the American cities. Accordingly the latter, 
between August 13, the date of his arrival in New York, and Septem- 
ber 30, went to South Norwalk, New Haven, Syracuse, Allegheny, 
Wheeling, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis and Chicago, thence pro- 
ceeding to Madison, where he and Professor Commons discussed the 
data the two had collected together and separately and worked on their 
joint report until October 26. Between November 4 and December 15 
Professor Commons visited Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Syracuse, 
Wheeling and Allegheny, reviewing Mr. Sullivan's investigations. Work 
of the two labor investigators on the text of their report was done in 
New York together December 20-22, while tabulating the wages returns, 
proof-reading and the insertion of additional matter, with the cori'e- 
spondence over it, took four months more. 

"Of the twenty undertakings in America selected by the Committee 
of Five, those in Norfolk, Utica, Geneva, Toledo and Pittsburg were 
not investigated. The method pursued in each city visited was one 
adapted to the time at the disposal of the investigator, or both. Usually 
a schedule was filled out during intei*views with managers or other ofli- 
cials, or in some cases given them to be written up, and inquiries there- 
upon suggested put to them, after which the leaders of the trade 
unions represented in the plants or the Central Labor Union officers 
w^ere seen, as also city officials and such citizens possessing informa- 
tion as might easily be reached. While the restrictions of time occa- 
sionally limited the search for bottom facts in regard to controverted 
stateriients, the investigators believe that they have obtained the evi- 
dence essential to intelligent conclusions with respect to the part as- 
signed them in the general inquiry." 

IV. 

One of my returns of facts ignored by Investigator Commons 
was a tabular statement of the increase in wages and reduction in 
hours of about one hundred unions among the organized motormen 
and conductors of America. It would have established the point I 
advanced (page 63) in my review as to the improvement in labor 
conditions being much more marked under street-car companies in 



28 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

America than under municipal tramway departments in Britain. 
This table, as designed by me, was drawn np by a university stu- 
dent at Madison from printed material given me at the general 
offices in Detroit of the Amalgamated Street Eailway Employees of 
America, and it was later verified and additions were made to 
it in the same offices, nnder President W. D. Mahon's in- 
structions. It showed at a glance one of the most remarkable 
changes for the better that has ever taken place in any occupation, 
and it completely did away with any claim that municipal owner- 
ship was necessary in the United States to improve the well being 
of street-car employees, or, consequently, any class of employees 
organizable in unions. With this table in his possession, as well as 
the tables for British tramways to be compared with it. Investigator 
Commons, knowing I was anxious to get it, or part of it, in the 
report anywhere, saw that it was left out and then wrote (page 109) 
in his review: "The private [tramway] companies [of Great Brit- 
ain], although paying less than the municipalities, have also ad- 
vanced their rates of pay with the introduction of electrical trac- 
tion. The same is true of the traction companies in the United 
States, although our investigations have not included a survey of 
these companies, and we are unable to make a statistical compari- 
son." 

The desire for prevarication of Investigator Commons in this 
oase becomes even more astonishing when it is known that I had 
directed his attention to a report on "Street Eailwav Employment 
in the United States,'' in the March, 1905, "Bulletin" ot the Na- 
tional Department of Labor, which took up 98 of the closely 
printed pages of that publication. I had compared President 
Mahon's figures with the wage statistics of this report, the result 
being that the two sets were near enough alike to confirm those 
from the unions in general. Investigator Commons had before him 
both the Labor Bureau statistics of wages and the union's table of 
comparative wages, and ignored them ; but to make the point in his 
review (page 106) that the British Tramway and Vehicle Drivers' 
Union contained a larger proportion of tramway men in the muni- 
cipal imdertakings than the American Amalgamated Association 
had members, he promptly found in the same Labor Bureau article 
statistics for 1902 that suited his purpose. The author, however, 
said that the union claimed 70,000 members; that it was difficult 
to arrive at the exact membership, but that payments of monthly 
assessments for six months would indicate the 36,000 members. 
Points to be noted are: The British union takes in vehicle drivers 
(who in America go into the teamsters' union), and all the work- 
men connected with tramway imdertakings, while the Amalga- 
]iiated's membership in many places is almost solidly motormen 
and conductors. 

Y. 
Page 896, Part II, Vol. I, our joint report, questions 5 to 10, 
inclusive, with their answers, were omitted by Investigator Com- 
mons. He says in the introduction he wrote, page 885, that the 
brief schedule answers were "not adequate." Complete, with the 
answers, they are in my manuscript as I made it up froni the 
separate schedules, and they are in a typewritten copy I have of it. 



MATTER OMITTED. 2^ 

These questions, with some of the answers relating to municipal 
undertakings, are as follows : Question 5 : "Have the votes of em- 
ployees affected city elections?" Cleveland, reply by Superinten- 
dent of Water Works — "The present administration is undoubt- 
edly supported by the body of city employees." Eichmond — "Not 
in gas. Said to do in Police and Fire Departments." Allegheny 
(Williams) — "All work for the men to whom they are under obli- 
gations for their appointment." Question 6 : "Have they used 
political power to secure higher wages, fewer hours, etc. ?" Syra- 
cuse — "As a body, no; individuals exert an influence." Allegheny 
( Williams ) — "Yes" ; ( method explained ) . Wheeling — Secretary : 
"Only way to get higher wages and less hours." Question 7 : "Have 
candidates for office promised higher wages, better hours, etc., for 
employees?" Wheeling — Secretary: "All do it." Chicago — 
Water (bureau official) : "Candidates are at liberty to make prom- 
ises." Question 8 : "Are employees active in party work ?" Cleve- 
land — Superintendent: "A minority are." Syracuse — "Some are; 
party activity is to be expected." Question 9 : "Are they expected 
or required to pay political assessments?" Syracuse, Allegheny, 
Wheeling — "A percentage, or two per cent." Cleveland — "No: 
the superintendent supposes many contribute, but does not know 
who does." Detroit — Employee of another city department: "The 
list is sent around in other departments ; 'not compulsory,' the col- 
lectors say." Question 10: "What evidence is there of the influence 
of private companies upon the nomination and election of mem- 
bers of the franchise-granting and franchise-controlling authori- 
ties?" Seven out of eight replies was that there was no such evi- 
dence ; the eighth was "no reply." 

Had such admissions been made by the managers of com- 
panies, instead of municipal undertakings, would Investigator Com- 
mons have found them "adequate" for the schedules as printed ? 

VI. 

While I was in Madison in October, 1906, I wrote for our 
joint report a chapter entitled "Working Class Conditions." This 
I submitted in the manuscript to Investigator Commons, saying 
that it seemed to me that the contrasting social environments of 
American and British workingmen ought to be given some notice 
in our report, but he might deem what I had written, in part or 
as a whole, as exceeding our instructions from the Committee of 
Five. When in a day or two he returned the chapter to me he said : 
"This is all right," with a stronger show of approval than I had 
expected. Thenceforth 1 regarded the chapter as accepted for our 
report. It was put in type in New York. But in December my 
colleague, without giving reasons for his change of mind, wrote 
me that he would not accept it. I decided then to print it after 
our joint report on the facts, with its separate chapter heading and 
author's name-line. In a letter to Investigator Commons, written 
March 21, one of the last I sent him, I made special mention that 
"Working Class Conditions" and my review were separate chapters. 
What he did in the matter is shown in the following letter from 
me to the editor of the reports : 



tJO THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

Rome, Thursday, November 28, 1907. 
Dear Maltbie — 

Page-proofs 33 to 192 came last Monday. These are the first cor- 
rected proofs I have seen of Professor Commons' review or my own. An 
uncorrected copy of each reached me September 1. Previously, my 
only knowledge of Professor Commons' strictures relative to my review 
was gained from an extract in the Tribune in July. I note that Pro- 
fessor Commons has inserted in these page-proofs a considerable addi- 
tion to his personalities. 

I see that you (or your substitute as editor) have made up my 
"Working Class Conditions'' as part of my review, with a sub-heading. 
This was never my intention and is misleading to the reader. That 
chapter was written for the Labor Report, months before I wrote my 
review. Itjiad in my manuscript a distinct chapter heading, while my 
review had* no sub-headings. It was in my proof cut off from my re- 
view by dash lines, had under it the author's line ("By J. W. Sulli- 
van,") and had a heading in large capitals, all signifying that it was a 
chapter by itself. I intended it as no more than a setting forth of im- 
pressions gained from passing personal observation and from a variety 
of sources apart from the specific and sifted testimony called for in 
our schedule queries. That such was its nature the reader, prompted 
by what I now write, may be convinced through taking account of my 
warnings in it as to the difficulties of arriving at accuracy in thus sur- 
\ eying so broad a field. Had I seen a page-proof of this matter as it 
ca'ino*from the editor's hand, before it went to press, I would have 
restored this chapter to its original form as to headings, author's line, 
etc., and asked to have it made up apart from my reviews My manu- 
script, as you will remember, I edited as I expected it to be followed 
by the compositor, with even the type for headings particularized. 
But on your explanation that, answerable as you were for typographi- 
cal unity, you could hardly promise compliance, I withdrew this re- 
quest, i since have written you. in reply to queries in your letter of 
July G, that I would leave to you the placing of my matter in the 
General Report, but it did not occur to me that you might so run them 
together as to efface the distinction between my two papers. Could I 
have foreseen their mingling, or had a look at the page-proofs in time, 
I knoAv you would have helped me in preventing this error. In your 
letter of July 6 you said: "After consultation w-ith Commons I have 
printed what you have to say on 'Working Class Conditions' imme- 
diately following the other matter you wrote." This is a pregnant sen- 
tence as I read it now. Professor Commons, it seems, knew^ just how 
it was to be made up, and it suited him. You write as if you regarded 
it as separate matter from my review. I inferred it was to follow the 
review, but as a separate chapter. 

I could pass this matter over with less talk about it did it not give 
some apjarent support to Professor Commons' reference, in his addi- 
tional personalities, to "the practice of my colleague in going outside 
the matter actually investigated by us." I have just looked over my 
review proper, printed before the heading "Working Class Conditions," 
to find any possible evidence on which it might justly be said I pursued 
such a practice. To my mind there is none. Professor Commons knew 
that "ATorking Class Conditions" was no part of my review. He saw 
that paper when it was written, months before I wrote my review as 
I have Slid, and accepted it as a chapter of our joint "Labor Report," 
but later refused to stand by this acceptance. The one quotation in my 
review giving rise to his fresh assault on me was sent to me as I was 
closing, and I inserted it subject to final correction in the proof or pre- 
viously, by him or myself, in the light of further facts coming to either 
ot us. My use of its statements was obviouslv onlv in -the measure of 
Its accredited source. It made points that deserved to be brought out 
as they were sure to be some time. Had a carbon copy of Professor 
Commons comments on this quotation been sent me, 'in observance 
with the courtesies prevailing among all the other investigators, or if 
a proof of them had been forwarded to me from your offic? when thev 




his complaint. 



A PROTEST. 31 

The rest of Professor Commons' personalities I shall fully deal 
-f^ith— to his satisfaction— in a paper I have in preparation. 

If there is any part of the General Report yet unprinted I should 
Jike to have yon insert this letter in it — anyv/here so it gets in. It is 
my right to have the public notified in the Report that I protested at 
the earliest possible moment against Professor Commons' first attack 
on me, and that I again protest against this further attack of which I 
have just learned. I intend, in good time, to present my side of a 
public personal controversy v^^hich up to the present has been wholly 
one-sided and which I would have endeavored to prevent by every hon- 
orable effort had a duplicate copy of Professor Commons' manuscript 
ever been sent me, or a proof of his review been seen by me before it 
went to the public. 

The failure to reach me of the proof you believe must have been 
mailed for me from your secretary's office when the proofs were sent 
to the Committee of Twenty-One cannot be positively attributed to mis- 
carriage in the mails. So far as I am aware not a single letter or 
newspaper properly addressed to me or my wife has missed either of 
us since we left :New York, nearly eight mouths ago. I have one per- 
manent European address. Your secretary, or an assistant, may have 
mailed a proof to one of my former American addresses, of which I 
had three in New York. At two of these miscellaneous printed matter 
addressed to me takes its fate with literally heaps of newspapers and 
the like handed by the postman to office help every day. 

If you have retained my letters to you written last spring and sum- 
mer they will remind you what I wa-ote you then regretting that I had 
not yet received Professor Commons' review, of which I was in expec- 
tation every week, and saying, in effect, tliat he and I had been pre- 
viously enabled through discussion to reconcile seeming differences in 
statement or avoid offensiveness in expressions of opinion. My review 
was written in the expectation of a continuance of reasonable consul- 
tation between us. I looked for any criticism of it in Professor Com- 
mons' review to reach me before any one else, that I might have op- 
portunity of reconsidering my expressions, or even certain conclusions, 
if the ends of peace and reason could be reached while principle should 
be observed. Had the professor seen to it that my expectations in this 
regard were realized, instead of going into print in the newspapers in 
my absence, long before I knew what he was about, I might, have ren- 
dered him a service in bringing his criticisms of me more nearly in line 
with accuracy and wisdom. This task is yet before me. I shall make 
clean work of it, I promise, as sure as I live. 

Yours truly, J. W. SULLIVAN. 

MANOEUVRING TO EVADE INSTRUCTIONS AND BRING 
IN UNVERIFIABLE ONE-SIDED TESTIMONY. 

One example of Investigator Commons' fine pla}^ in the Me- 
phistophelian art of manoeuvring deserves a chapter of itself. The 
entire plot, in its beautifull}'- sinister unfolding, forms a model for- 
Belasco. 

The weeks we were collating our notes in London before sepa- 
rating was a season of good will among experts and Commissioners 
alike. We were made to feel that all hands were working together 
in fine spirit, with truth the common aim, notwithstanding our 
theories. One day, profiting by this situation, Investigator Com- 
mons informed me that as it would be impossible for hini that year 
to spare further time in traveling for the Commission, he had 
decided, after consulting with Professor Bemis and others among 
our municipalist members, to ask me to finish the labor investiga- 
tion in America alone. I strongly objected to the proposal. The 
instructions of the Five, issued after considering the rights of all 
parties, required the investigators to travel in balanced pairs. In 
going alone to the ten or twelve remaining undertakings in the 



32 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

American cities on our list, I should run man}^ risks, certainly of 
misunderstandings, if nothing more serious. The work ought not 
to be one-sided. Investigator Commons argued that he would trust 
me to do justice to both sides ; he would accept what I should re- 
port. I tried to avoid the prospect by proposing to quit the Com- 
mission and remain abroad. From this I was dissuaded through 
the remonstrances of certain of the Commissioners. Some days 
after I had assented to the arrangement, and just before the party 
broke up. Investigator Commons casually remarked that, as he 
had a week or two yet before his vessel sailed, he would go to 
Leicester and Glasgow, and perhaps Sheffield, to "check up" certain 
unsettled points. As he had just manifested implicit confidence in 
me, I could hardly stand on my right to accompany him, as was in 
strictness my duty. He went. He never voluntarily told me just 
where. Questioning him in Madison in October, I brought him to 
admit that he had gone back to all our British cities, except Dublin 
and Norwich. And from the form he had meantime given our 
joint British report I saw that no small part of his e&orts had 
tended to minimize points unfavorable to municipal ownership 
that I had brought to light. He had seen men, mostly pro-muni- 
cipalists, notes of whose expressions in speeches or interviews 
weighing against municipal ownership I had taken, and wrestled 
with them to find reasons for them to modify or recant. Among the 
men he had thus looked up were ex-Councillor Holmes of Leices- 
ter, Councillor Bailey of Sheffield, Labor Secretary Fox of Man- 
chester, Councillor Sexton of Liverpool, Organizer Davies of th? 
Scottish Municipal Employees' Association, and the Glasgow Labor 
Councillors whose speeches denouncing influence in appointments 
I heard in Council, April 5. Where Investigator Commons failed 
to induce some of these men to change their statements he found 
something wrong with their character. In Madison, on gradually 
taking cognizance of this neat piece of Hummel work, I regarded 
it in silent contemplation. 

At a session of the Five, the week of my arrival in Xew York 
in August, Professor Bemis, on hearing mention of my approach- 
ing journey to investigate the American undertakings alone, dis- 
played some anxiety. He could only consent to it, he presently 
announced, provided that Investigator Commons, after the conclu- 
sion of my work in any city, might be free to pay it a visit to verify 
or amplify my report in the interests of the pro-municipalist side. 
Had this plan been proposed in London I would not have con- 
sented to it ; had it been said that Investigator Commons could find 
time to follow me, I could have replied that I would await his con- 
venience to accompany me. But I was now on the eve of starting ; 
the meeting of the Twenty-One to receive the reports was appointert 
for November; thei labor investigation had to be hurried on if it 
was to be done at all. I could but say aye to Professor Bemis* 
proposal without bringing up any profitless question as to the truth 
of Investigator Commons' assurance to me in London that Pro- 
fessor Bemis was with him in suggesting to me the original plan. 

I finished my task of visiting the American cities alone in six 
weeks of continuous labor during a long heated term. My find- 
ings, especially those against the municipal undertakings, I made 



MANCEUVRING. 35 

known by letter from place to place to Investigator Commons^ 
rushing on to Madison, my work of nearly four weeks there with 
my colleague brought the date of my departure for New York ta 
the last week of October. Then, promptly on November 4, Inves- 
tigator Commons set out, with my full written report in his pos- 
session, and during the next six weeks went to all the cities of my 
route, except New Haven, "checking me up." He alleges he also 
got together on this trip his stories relating to political irregulari- 
ties in these cities involving companies not on our list for investi- 
gation. 

The facts I had unearthed regarding the political degradation 
of municipal ownership at the Syracuse water works, the Allegheny 
and Detroit electric lighting stations, and the Wheeling gas works 
Investigator Commons found no reason to contradict in any but 
small particulars. He naturally made in regard to these under- 
takings some additions easily possible even to a novice if provided 
with my report and unused notes and with ample time at his dis- 
posal. 

During the six weeks of this tour of Investigator Commons I 
was awaiting word from him in New York in the dark. I could 
not find out from any one where he was. I could have joined him: 
in his sleuth work on the companies had he let me know what he- 
v/as doing and had I judged his diversions legitimate. Or I could: 
have asked the Committee of Five to pass upon the regularity of 
his proceedings. But his game was to lie low. We met at length 
in Philadelphia, December 12, while revisiting with other Commis- 
sioners the United Gas Improvement Company's works. I next 
saw him in New York December 20- He had meantime worked 
over parts of my report, fitting into them his new matter. He gave 
me the manuscript in bulk. On reading it that night I gained my 
first knowledge of his extraordinary discoveries regarding com- 
panies not on our list for investigation that he had written up as a 
set-off to my disastrous report on municipal undertakings that 
were on our list. 

We had one brief interview on the subject before he took a 
train for his Christmas at Madison. I told him I could not accept 
off-hand v\^hat he had written about the companies. They were not 
on the list. I knew nothing whatever of my own knowledge about 
them. I had heard none of this talk about their campaign contri- 
butions and the like. He said he would confidentially give me, and 
if necessary the Chairman of the Five, the names of the authorities 
for his statements. I asked if his informants would tell me what 
they had told him. That, he said, could hardly be expected. I rep- 
resented to him that, besides relating to men and undertakings not 
on our list, and the statements coming only to him through secret 
channels, what he had written regarding one company, if not 
others, was in my judgment libelous. His whole proceedmg had' 
been unknown to me, unforeseen, surprising, and aside from our 
proper duties as therefore performed. But he was in a hurry to get 
ready for his journey, and our verbal consultations over the matter 
came to an inconclusive end. I have not seen him since. We had 
no clash. My demeanor with him on the occasion went further, 
than reasonableness; in every earnest way I could command I mani- 



34 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

fested a desire not only to accord to him everything he could claim 
under his rights, but to keep in fiew our project of a joint report on 
the facts. 

My observations of Investigator Commons' demeanor at the de- 
nouement at this interview would tend to confirm a conception of 
the psychological dramatists of the current day. The old notion 
of the character in the cast who represents the spirit of disloyalty 
was that of a man of coolness and nerve, self-possessed, speaking his 
untruths unabashed and with measured fluency. Xot so. The 
plotter against the truth in the presence of transparent and stoutly 
defended truth is by turns in speech reticent and abruptly dogmatic 
and incoherent^ in manner nervously watchful and abstract and 
hangdog. His studied words are contradicted by the uncontrolla- 
ble working of the muscles about his eyes and mouth, and the fleet- 
ing ashiness and purple suffusion of his face. He wants to get 
tiway. 

The libelous matter was omitted after being given to the Five 
and referred to its Chairman ; I put a footnote to Investigator Com- 
mons' Wheeling matter regarding companies saying that statements 
as to the political situation in that city, aside from what related to 
the municipal gas undertaking, were his, and, still striving for a 
joint report as to facts, I stretched a point and let his gossip about 
the SjTacuse and Allegheny companies pass. I see that (page 94) 
he has surreptitiously introduced in his review a passage directed 
against the Xew Haven company which was not in the proof slips 
submitted to the Twentv-One. His unauthenticated statements 
against the companies not on our list are quoted by other nro-mu- 
nicipal Commissioners in their summaries with the respect due to 
testimony and verdict from a university professor. 

Just at what point Investigator Commons might have seen his 
way thus to stack the cards only circumstantial evidence can show. 
Perhaps the germ of the trick foimd lodgment in his mind when I 
first showed myself disposed to confide in his honor. He early saw 
I w^as not to be a stickler in a small way for the rights of the anti- 
municipal side. This I made clear to him toward the close of our 
first tour together as investigators, mention of which now finds 
place. 

Between January 16 and February 10, 1906, Investigator Com- 
mons and I visited the gas undertakings of Philadelphia, Kichmond, 
and Atlanta, and the electricity works of Allegheny. Our findings 
were continuously disheartening to Investigator Commons. The 
pay, hours, working conditions and welfare and beneficial provisions 
of the United Gas Improvement Company in Philadelphia were all 
above criticism. The score of trade union officials and others wo 
interviewed in Philadelphia (whose names are in my note books) 
had nothing to say against the com^pany except that by giving more 
to its employees than the unions demanded, and better conditions 
than the municipality, it had carried its force beyond possibly or- 
ganizable territory, especially in view of the poor development or 
the unions in Philadelphia represented in the gas industry. At tlie 
Eichmond municipal gas works we found high wages for the white 
stokers and meter readers, and ordinary contractors' wages for the 
black ditch diggers in an undertaking that was a butt of ridicule 
among the gas engineers of the United States. Its bad service, for 
jears growing worse, had moved the City Council to employ a New 



UNVERIFIED STORIES. 35 

York gas expert to examine the plant, and he had just reported 
that to put the works, mains and accessories in good workable con- 
dition would cost more than half a million dollars. In Atlanta we 
found the gas company's wages and conditions for the black labor- 
ers better than those for the municipality's black employees, while 
wages for the white skilled men, all points considered, were about 
the same as at Eichmond (joint report, pages 496-99). The under- 
taking, a layman could see, after Eichmond, was in a state of the 
highest efficiency. At Allegheny we found the municipal lighting 
plant the plaything of politicians and a joke to the enemies of 
civic reform. 

Investigator Commons had a few 3^ears previously been inves- 
tigating for 'municipal ownership at Eichmond and Allegheny, and 
his fellow-municipalists were still writing favorably of these under- 
takings. He came to the investigation of the four cities now in 
question possessed of alleged data he had gathered as a writer sup- 
porting municipal ownership with a university library at his com- 
mand. But the obvious state of facts we fell upon converted the 
beauties of municipal ownership in each ease into a mere caricature 
of the picture constantly painted for the public by its apostles. 

Investigator Commons was perplexed. He evidently foresaw 
defeat in our report. I sympathized with him. In his depression, 
at Atlanta he one day questioned me as to my remedy for the abuses 
of municipal monopoly. I outlined my ideas of a just, thorough, 
and efficient regulation. I went on, in effect: "While you and I 
may differ as to remedies, why in the name of truth should we dif- 
fer as to our observed facts? You hold that you are a social re- 
former, and I believe I am. You look to methods I regard as so- 
cialistic; I to methods that are American. I would simply aim to 
have legalized privilege everywhere abolished or brought to the 
possible minimum. This, as we have seen at Philadelphia, can 
be done in municipal affairs by means of fair contract in per- 
forming work that, involving an exclusive occupancy of the 
streets, is the community's concern. In the United States we have 
examples of every grade of work by capitalist corporations for mu- 
nicipalities, from barefaced robbery through corruptly obtained 
franchises right along upward to honest and satisfactory service un- 
der franchises that stipulate protection of public interests. If you 
and I find examples of the latter class it is our duty to point to them 
as models for imitation. Now, so far as our investigation has pro- 
ceeded you have but a sorry showing for municipal operation. The 
salient facts we have come upon are not the facts on which the 
followers 'of your movement have been fed. Up to the present 
you and I have much the same notes and schedules and copies of 
reports and wage tables. It would honor the cause of unpartisan 
systematic investigation if we could agree on a report as to facts, 
even if we should differ in tracing out their significance. I pro- 
pose that we aim at an agreement on the facts, so far as possible, 
simply pointing out the exceptions where we cannot agree." 

The response was a monosyllabic assent, not over-enthusiastic. 

This proposal of mine thenceforth became an asset among the 
advantages Investigator Commons worked up for his side. When 
months later we discussed our selections for publication among the 
superabundant material we had collected, he set aside considerable 



36 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

that it seemed 'to me might indicate a trend at home and abroad 
against municipal ownership. However, as he was obliged to make 
admissions enough to give ample room for the support of my views 
on principal points, I waived my preferences. 

Investigator Commons next had, at Madison, the three months 
from Feb. 10^ 1906, when he parted with me in Pittsburg, until 
toward the end of May, when he started for Europe, to lay his plans 
for manoeuvring to counterbalance our sure discrediting of the 
American municipal undertakings we had seen and probably of 
those we were yet to see. The movement for municipal ownership 
m^eantime was active in many parts of the country. He may at 
this time have got hold of some of the talk about the companies 
that the next winter he embodied in his additions to our report as 
his own discoveries. Or, in the autumn, while during my own trip 
I kept sending him additional bad accounts regarding the American 
municipal undertakings, the resultant panic may have brought him 
to seek information from the powerful news bureaus in various 
cities of 'the national leaders of municipalism. In any case, consid- 
ering Investigator Commons' grade of veracity to be what we now 
know it, evidence more convincing than his word is necessary to 
win belief that, by accident, he enjoyed, in just the cities concerned, 
an intimacy with the onl^^ men who could impart to him, confiden- 
tially, a series of remarkable stories of political bribery and other 
malfeasance in which they themselves were first among the guilty 
parties. That in large part he already had his cards up his sleeve 
when he proposed in London I should visit the American cities 
alone is highly probable. 

In preparing what I wrote of our American report in Madison 
I cited by name my authorities on points that might be justly con- 
sidered beyond our certain knowledge. For example, I gave, witn 
their permission, the names of the responsible persons at the Syra- 
cuse, Wheeling and Allegheny works who described the political un- 
doing of those undertakings. To ithis candor Investigator Com- 
mons objected. His position was that the authors of the report 
should stand responsible for its contents. I brought to his atten- 
tion statements that miglit arouse the reader's doubts, or give rise 
to controversy, or be modified' by us ourselves on familiar knowl- 
edge. Whatever was obvious and unquestionable should be ours; 
but on important debatable matters the reader was entitled to his 
own judgment on the authorities. We as investigators should halt 
at the borders of possible non-fact. Investigator Commons insisted 
that our writing should be ex cathedra. He had his own reasons. 
He was coming to a part of his work where he couldn't publish his 
authorities. 

It is clear at the present time that Investigator Commons' re- 
turns against undertakings not on our list, gathered from back- 
stairs sources, ought to have been rejected by the Committee of 
Five. This I ought to have insisted upon. The companies did 
not fall within our inquiry. The undertakings named by the Five 
were all that the experts or the labor investigators were to report 
upon. The chairman of the Five at its sessions time and again 
warmly advocated a restriction of the inquir}^ to the questions of the 
schedule and queries directly arising therefrom. "Xo hot air !" was 
his admonition. No wandering all over, town and country to 



REJECTED TESTIMONY. 37 

make points for or against. As I pushed along on my mission, 
without a single tip from any source as to what wrong was to be 
found at the municipal undertakings, advancing from the slight 
and perhaps inadvertent admissions of a subordinate to the full 
story of machine rule and exploitation of a city administrative bu- 
reau given me by perhaps the tenth official I interviewed, it never 
occurred to me that whispered stories of wholly different forms of 
public wrongdoing in the legislative departments of the same mu- 
nicipalities might serve to lessen the proof that municipal operation 
of productive enterprises ]iad been found to be economically unsound 
and a permanent opportunity for public spoliation. The informa- 
tion I gathered, open for revision by my colleague and all the Com- 
missioners, stands in contrast with Investigator Commons' easily 
manufactured revelations, the sources of which are yet shrouded in 
mystery. In admitting any portion of his barroom lore and repro- 
ductions of newspaper political campaign froth to our joint report 
the Five erred. I myself should have cut away from every word 
of it and ended my cherished plan of a joint report. My experi- 
ence in this case has shown me that even the facts of the addition 
table may be distorted by an observer cranked with the mental twist 
of a fanatic. 

SOME REJECTED TESTIMONY— UNITED STATES. 

Investigator Commons rejected from our joint report the fol- 
lowing interviews and other passages, which were in my typewritten , 
manuscript just as here printed. He said some of them were not 
admissible as within the range of the facts we were seeking; others 
he omitted in rewriting tlie parts of my manuscript he found neces- 
sary to reconstruct after his visits to the American undertakings 
following mine. I had regarded the points thus brought out by 
me worth printing if authorities were given: 

^'Secretary Schenck [Wheeling municipal gas works] said to 
the investigator, who wrote down the statement in his presence: 
^The municipal gas works in Wheeling are a dead failure. The 
worJcs themselves are in a dilapidated condition, and the manage- 
ment is wholly political. I do not care to hold my place, as it is 
difficult to be honest in it. A man at the works if discharged for 
unfitness can be reinstated the same day if he has a pull. Wages 
have been run up by the politicians in consequence of the demands 
of the little crowds of the hands joining for political purposes. 
The works are in a poor state in every way. I'm so disgusted with 
the political side of my job that I'm ready to throw it up now, 
though I have fifteen months to serve out my term.' " 

"In July, 1906, the [Wheeling] chargers were receiving $2 a 
day and the stokers $1.80. Both classes demanded an advance of 
40 cents a day. The events that ensued were thus described by a 
colleague of Secretary Sclienck, the works Superintendent : ^Those 
hottest for a strike were made committeemen. First they went to 
the Council, which referred them to the Gas Trustees, who asked 
advice of the City Solicitor, getting the reply that they had no right 
to increase wages. The Council, both First and Second Branches, 
with the Gas Board, offered 20 cents as a compromise. N'ext day 
the men struck, but that night accepted 25 cents as the advance and 
went back to work.' Tolitics,' continued the Superintendent, ^has 



38 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

a whole lot to do with the works. The men get out among Council- 
men who don't want their ill will and consequently agitate for 
them. Of course, a private concern could get the work done for 
much less.' " 

''C. H. Watkins, ex-City Clerk, Wheeling (an aged veteran 
soldier, retired from public life, well spoken of by all who men- 
tioned him) : 'The gas works are steadily going down. Politics 
governs the water works, public works and gas works. When in 
office I paid $100 political assessment. All the officeholders pay it. 
I retired in disgust from politics. When I was at the court house 
the gas works were in the hands of politicians.' " 

[In Syracuse.] "James Horton, secretary of the District 
Coimcil, Brotherhood of Carpenters, made complaint that not one 
of the men in the water works bureau was a unionist, and that the 
only way for a wage worker to get a job was through political in- 
fluence. . . . Men in every city department at the present 
time have sinecures through political influence. The work con- 
tracted for is done under union conditions only when the union 
itself establishes them." 

"A union officer exnlained that he was not encouraged to helo 
in a change in administration inasmuch as w^hen J. B. Kline v/as 
elected Mayor he discharged sixty laborers for economy's sake, but 
raised salaries in the office by a considerable percentage." 

[In Chicago.] "An official of Union Xo. 134, Electrical Work- 
ers (interior wiremen), said he preferred to deal with companies 
rather than the city. His opinion, as expressed, was that 'in spire 
of civil service they'll get your scalp.' He regarded the City Hall 
regulations as to time-checking over-exacting, and thought the 
changing of Commissioners affected the positions of the rank and 
file, if not as to security of position, in permanency of location -while 
at w^ork, or other lesser points. . . . The Financial Secretary 
of Steam Engineers, Xo. 3, when interviewed, spoke of abuses under 
former administrations which operated to the disadvantage of his 
union members, especially men in the lake cribs. ^\Tiile the water 
bureau paid more than the scale, the Fire Department paid less. 
His union was obliged to fight the city to obtain union observances. 
He concluded: 'We use more or less political influence.' The Sec- 
retary of the Stationary Firemen said: 'We go before the Finance 
Committee (which makes up the appropriations) and tell them.: 
"These are our rates," ' and they are politicians and know what 
to do." 

[In Allegheny.] "Ex-Engineer Williams asked the investiga- 
tor to write this down : 'I am resolved never again to hold any 
position in a municipal plant.' " 

"At the power station office an emplo3^ee said to the investiga- 
tor: 'It would be the grandest thing in the world if politics could 
be kept out of municipal ownership.' Mr. Williams' conmient on 
this was : 'He's the man who when I was ousted by politics took my 
place through politics.' " 

"Eobert Dilworth, City Clerk, while being asked for some data 
by the investigator, remarked on the subject: 'The city can do 
nothing as cheaply and well as private enterprise. Political bosses 
really run the bureaus of this city.' " 

"The President of the Atlanta Gas Company, speaking of the 



REJECTED TESTIMONY. 39 

conditions under which men might get places and keep ihem with 
his corporation, said: 'The employees of the company are con- 
cerned only as to their merits in the eyes of their employers; they 
get their places without political influence and hold the'm regard- 
less of changes in administration. The interests of retailers or 
other business men do not curtail their work.' " 

"The Atlanta gas-works officials, in all departments, said that 
in case of a vacancy to be filled by a white man or boy there arose 
with the company no other question than competency and character. 
The employees had no concern but to do their work well." 

"The Atlanta trade union leaders had no special criticism to 
make of the company. One union official thought that if it were to 
pay $2 a day it could get w^hite men for retort house work." 

"The South Norwalk AA^orks are of about the same type, Avith 
respect to labor employment, as ninety-three per cent of the 1,041 
municipal electric plants in existence in the United States in March, 
1906, — of this total 160 being in villages of less than 1,000 in popu- 
lation and 808 in towns of behveen 1,000 and 10,000. . . . The 
members of the local union, recognizing that these municipal em- 
ployees are not actively underbidding them in the labor market, 
permit the works to occupy unmolested the position of — in the 
words of the superintendent — an 'independent institution' — a peace- 
ful haven lying out of the SAvift current in which the large modern 
companies move. . . . Illustration of the differences necessarily 
arising betAveen labor conditions in the municipal plants of small 
places and those which are in the category of large industries may be 
found in some slight comparison between the South Norwalk and 
the Allegheny, Detroit, and Chicago public electric works. These 
three latter, which have been investigated by our Commission, are 
among the tAvelve municipal undertakings in cities of the United 
States having more than 40,000 inhabitants. In each of the three" 
the trade union had asserted itself. In Allegheny, for instance, ac- 
cording to the testimony of the ex-Assistant Superintendent, the 
local electrical workers' union prevents political assessments on its 
members. In Detroit, years ago, the trimmers went on strike, were 
defeated, and noAV most of the force work as non-unionists. In 
Chicago, the union's representatives wait yearly on the City Elec- 
trician to have its scale signed. There is no union recognition of 
these as 'independent institutions.'" 

From my notes I gave Investigator Commons the following 
brief quotations from interviews : 

J. H. Gilmour, of Hamilton, Scotland, Fraternal Delegate to 
the American Federation of Labor from the British trade union';, 
was Avith me when, by questioning, I obtained from E. H. AVilliamSy 
civil engineer of the Allegheny municipal electric works, his first 
admissions as to the disgraceful political situation there. Investi- 
gator Commons, Avho Avas Avith us at the beginning of the conver- 
sation, soon walked away, to speak to the Superintendent about 
some statistical tables. When we left Mr. Williams, who had given^ 
the political aspect of municipal ownership anything but an attrac- 
tive appearance, Mr. Gilmour said: "I have learned more in the 
last hour about the deplorable possibilities of municipal OAvnership 
in America than I ever got from all other sources before. I am 
sure that the usual arguments for municipal OAvnership do not apply 



40 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

where political conditions are such as described by this -official of the 
works. Yonr first municipal problem in America is evidently puri- 
fication. When you get ihat you may start on a new basis.'' 

An employee of the Eichmond municipal gas-works said : "Our 
business methods in the gas department are bad. The connection 
between the financial and works branches is unsettled. We simply 
move through a routine, and make no effort to .build up a good 
business. The hardware merchants prevent us from selling gas 
stoves. We can't fix a rental, like the electric light company, on our 
own unused fixtures in a house. Any consumer can start a howl 
that will tell against us, and we have no protection. We have little 
encouragement to do good work. The public doesn't know any- 
thing about the gas department ; most people don't know where the 
works are. They have .no interest in the employees; the gas com- 
mittee changes ; the City Councilmen don't generally know the char- 
ter provision governing the city gas imdertaking." 

In every case these views or experiences, coming from men in 
■daily touch with municipal ownership, embodied summaries of vital 
points, given with positive definiteness. But they were misfits for a 
report built on the pedagogic plan. They told, however, just what 
the average inquirer is anxious to know, at the very outset of his 
looking into the subject. "^\Tiat are the wise ones saying who have 
been through the mill ?" he asks. And then in approaching his own 
conclusions on what further data reach him he feels that he moves 
in a pathwa}^ well lighted. 

REJECTED TESTIMONY— GREAT BRITAIN. 

From Great Britain — of the same import as the previous chap- 
ter. Interviews I obtained indicating the dangers of municipali- 
zation, especially to the integrity of unions and unionists : 

[Xotes from several interviews] : 

"James Dalrymple, General Manager, Glasgow Tramways: 
T'avors disfranchising public servants; never votes himself; does 
not permit his employees to be active in politics (municipal) ; re- 
gards the Municipal Employees' Association as ^mischievous' ; be- 
lieves in and supports trade unions. The Glasgow tramway service 
is ^open shop.' The management follows the market rate of w^ages ; 
when a joiners' strike in Glasgow recently failed, the corporation 
service reduced the wages of its joiners ^d. an hour, though its 
men had not taken part in the strike." 

" *A shrewd Secretary of the M. E. A., a man big enough for 
the purpose, could do much toward making the Glasgow municipal 
employees a political force ; here is possibly a menace.' " 

" Touncilmen constantly recommend men for work; the man- 
ager exercises his own judgment; individual Councilmen will rec- 
ommend what collectively the Council reject; individual Council- 
men have voted contrary to their opinions to i^lease their constitu- 
ents.' " 

" ^The power of discharge and appointment rests only in the 
General Manager; dismissal follows one charge for drunkenness, 
when proven; a weak )nanager would soon brina^ the service to 
ruin.' " 

" ^The public, especially the workingmen, exert a pressure for 
the reduction of fares ; a demand for it is made for political effect.' " 



REMODELING TESTIMONY. '41 

Investigator Commons gives it as a fact (page 104) that in all 
the British municipal undertakings, except in Liverpool, the atti- 
tude of the managers was favorable to union men. Yet he knew 
that Superintendent Alexander Wilson, gas, Glasgow, had said, in 
response to a question : ^'We do not recognize any union ; a man 
is a man to us," and that there had been a strike at the Glasgow 
gas-works — causes sufficient for him to put the undertaking in the 
"hostile'^ class had it belonged to a company. 

Eichard Davies, then the Scottish District Organizer, Muni- 
<jipal Employees, told us : ^'The influence of Councilmen in getting 
jobs is a known fact." 

In a debate at the Glasgow Council meeting, Thursday, April 
5, 1906, on a proposition to enact that all city employees be en- 
gaged through the Municipal Labor Bureau, the following were 
.among the utterances of Labor Councilmen : 

"Councillor Battersby : ^It is the prevailing impression that in 
Glasgow there is no chance to get employment- without the recom- 
mendation of a town Councillor. This is the painful experience of 
a Councillor. The Labor Bureau was established for the express 
purpose of extending aid to those seeking employment, but not one 
in 100 are placed through the Bureau. This notorious fact of ig- 
noring the Labor Bureau offends the sense of justice in the out- 
side mind.^ 

"Bailie Stewart: ^The idea prevails that a man cannot get a 
job without influence. AYe ought to know the number of men who 
are registered at the Labor Bureau who are not employed. We 
could have in a few months a record of the men registering.* 

"Bailie Stevenson: ^In the abstract the motion is good and 
right, but the employment of those registered should be preferen- 
tial and not compulsory.' 

"The ex-Treasurer: '^The friends of foremen and officials get 
n preference.' 

"Bailie Forsyth: 'TJiis motion would cover the whole of the 
corporation employment. Promotion comes in cases from outside 
influence, while the lads in the offices are not promoted." [Em- 
ployment from a certain commercial school.] 

"[Glasgow Corporation has no civil service.]" 

In an interview at which Investigator Commons was present, 
R. Toller, 35 Ruskin Buildings, Corporation Street, Birmingham, 
Secretary Amalgamated Gas AVorkers, Brickmakers and General 
Laborers' Society, said: 

" Tf the men at the Corporation Gas Works in Birmingham 
did not organize the Corporation would not increase wages or give 
good hours. We deal with the Corporation as we would with a pri- 
vate employer. Some of the Councillors, who are business men, 
might pay the lowest wages if we did not organize and defend our- 
selves.' 

" 'There is difficulty in organizing men in fairly good positions 
and holding them. They will organize to get an increase, but the 
difficulty is after we get the increase to keep the men in the line.' " 

"Editor Kirk, of *^Dart,' Birmingham : 'Speaking of Birming- 
ham, I say that members of the Council do not give the attention 
to the gas undertaking that would be given by the directors of a 
company. They trust to the officials. Municipal trading creates 
an immense army of officials. The gas employees here have more 



42 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

than once forced the Council to raise their pay. When municipali- 
zation of electricity was talked of here shrewd people started an elec- 
tric enterprise and sold iiigh to the city.^ " 

"Pete Curran [now M. P., National Organizer] : The organic 
zation is rather indifferent in Glasgow and Leicester [municipal 
gas workers]. The men after getting a remedy for their grievances 
clear out of the union.' " 

"James Holmes, Trustee, at the general offices of the Amalga- 
mated Hosiery Union, Leicester, said: ^As an ex-member of the 
Leicester town Council 1 know that workmen get work on the Cor- 
poration through the influence of labor and other Councillors. Ap- 
plicants must have the backing of Councillors and others. In fact, 
many workmen vote for labor men in hope of getting work, and 
tlie candidate has encouraged this hope of getting work when seek- 
ing the workman's vote. And if the hoped for work is not found, 
men have said, "When are you going to get us a job?" "What did 
we elect you for, if not to get work?" and, "If you do not get ns 
jobs we shall not vote for you again." This is the danger existent 
to-day, and is a serious portent of the future. Behind the scenes 
and under the surface a great deal of this goes on. Few are free 
to state these facts, for most are either seeking a place on Council or 
Parliament, and are dependent of the votes of workmen as they are 
the numbers, and if the facts were mentioned they would lose votes 
and place. The broad spirt of freedom no more exists among the 
masses than among the classes. I was a member of the Gas, High- 
way, Sanitary Watch, and Estate Committees, and had some experi- 
ence of these things. Workmen to-day could be employed at 20 
per cent less than is now pajd in the open market, but the restric- 
tive influence of the unions in a protective manner acting on the 
Council raise the wages at least this amount. 

" 'In Britain the unions have been legalized as trade unions, as 
voluntary associations in restraint of trade, and have discarded 
the voluntary principle, and have become political associations, and 
trading associations, with about £1,000,000 invested at profit and 
interest. The effect of the election is to check the organizing of 
members, as men are being taught to look to Parliament instead of 
■unions as the unions have failed to gain the social efforts aimed at. 
Trade unions are declining as an economic force, and are emerging 
into a revolutionary political force, becoming separated from the 
scientific basis of truth, individual right and social justice.' " 

"Councillor A. J. Bailey, 55 Burngreave Eoad, Sheffield, Secre- 
tary, National Amalgamated Union of Labor, interviewed Wednes- 
day, June 13, at his office in his residence : 

" ^I am bound to recognize the weaknesses of municipalizing. 
In some respects the consequences of political action are deplorable. 
You can only build up your union for the time that labor does not 
hold political sway. And when an undertaking is municipalized 
and the wages and conditions of labor improved by labor politicians, 
the employees tend uniformly to drop out of the union. That was 
the case in Leicester. Our members do the same with me. I got 
the corporation gas employees an advance of 3d. a day through arbi- 
tration at Rotherham (near Sheffield), and they immediately 
dropped out. Tliey are not in a position to help themselves or any- 
one else at this moment. Had tlicy worked by union methods they 



REMODELING TESTIMONY. 4^S 

would be in the -union to-day and enjoying further advantages. 

" 'Tramway men in Sheffield are wearing a union button, while 
at work, without asking permission, and threaten to strike for the 
right. The movement is due to Socialist agitation. It is a sub- 
version of discipline. A political organization and not a trade 
union is attempting to run the matter. Nothing is to be gained 
by it. Discipline must be maintained in the municipal under- 
taking as in the limited company. 

" Tor some years the cry has been "The ballot box,'' "Trade 
unionism is played out," "Eight hours a day by legal enactment," 
"Wages by law" ! 

" 'The Independent Labor Party has thirty men in the House of 
Commons. They make a great noise about doing something for 
labor by legal enactment, and this has a tendency to lead workmen 
to believe that trade union methods are antiquated. The unskilled 
are holding back from organizing except the union is run as a po- 
litical organization. Trade union organizing is not advancing at 
the rate it ought in England. 

" 'A corporation plays quite as prominent a part in keeping 
wages down as keeping wages up. A Councillor who has some 
supporters not up to the standard of average workmen gives them 
notes to managers of department. The Councillor who has recom- 
mended a supporter who as a business man he would not emplo}^, 
will allow a rate of wages to be fixed for him at the value not of a 
good man, but of that of the inferior man recommended. 

" 'In a corporation [municipality] a certain percentage of po- 
litical hangers on must get jobs. In the Council I sometimes say,. 
"If this were a limited company, this could not happen." It would 
be easier to pad payrolls in a municipality by inferior men than 
in a private company. 

" Tf in America you could limit monopolies as we have done 
the gas companies in this country you would do the work properly. 
Instance : the Sheffield Gas L'ght and Coke Company. 

" T have observed that under corporations the tendency is for 
salary pay to go up while wages pay goes down, except in cases 
where the workmen are thoroughly organized in a strong trade 
union. 

" 'But, notwithstanding fhese trivial drawbacks, I am a strong 
believer in municipalization and a supporter of municipal under- 
takings.' " 

The basis of the foregoing matter from Councillor Bailey wafl 
my notes, taken on the 3 pot, of certain statements he made in this 
interview with him at Sheffield. These I had typewritten in Lon- 
don more than a month afterward, and sent to him. He returned 
them, with corrections and additions; what is here printed, unal- 
tered, is from his corrected copy. The most notable addition was 
the last paragraph. Investigator Commons, to whom I had given 
a copy, had" meantime drawn his attention to how he had "put his 
foot in it." He threw a somersault to get himself in the required 
attitude before the municipalization advocates. His long list of 
"deplorable consequences" had become "trivial drawbacks." 

A similar acrobatic feat was apparently performed by the Glas- 
gow Labor Councillprs, wliose words I quote above. This was done 
when Investigator Commons went back to Glasgow alone and man- 



44 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

aged to get the explanations of their remarks he prints, Vol. II, 
Part II, page 21. 

But Trustee Holmes could not be shaken. He had said what 
he meant. Neither could Organizer Davies. 

In London I had many interviews with Labor County Council- 
lors and Members of Parliament, in which they dwelt upon the 
seamy side of municipalization and the possible injury to result 
from the British trade union trend at that time toward Socialism. 
I ceased to enter such matter in my notebooks ; it was com.mon talk. 
Investigator Commons regarded any record of observers' views that 
foreshadowed consequences, or any assemblage of facts that pointed 
to a reversal of the political policies of British unions, as lying out- 
side our errand. Labor representatives themselves were cautious in 
talking of the pitfalls encountered in mingling unionism and poli- 
tics. They would at times ask not to be quoted. I had seen noth- 
ing of this circumspection when in Great Britain ten years before. 
Its trade union circles were then, as are America's now, charac- 
terized by a courageous frankness in the utterance of sentiments. 
^^Hunting cover" was an uncultivated art. But here were members 
of the very same group of men, perplexed as political trade union- 
ist officeholders, "afraid of their horses." I quote a passage I 
wrote in Madison, October, 1906, on this situation for the joint 
report ; Investigator Commons, in declining to accept it, rather re- 
garded this record of a serio-comic state of facts as out of place in 
sober, heavy report carpentering : 

"Eepeatedly in the course of this investigtion in Great Britain 
and the United States, the present writer (J. W. Sullivan) has 
listened to statements either by Councilmen or union officials re- 
garding which the makers afterward desired to hedge or even enter 
contradictions. If the investigator had made memoranda simply of 
the vital statements of the speaker's talk, his notes were later on 
criticised as '^scrappy' or not taking into account why the speaker 
was ^putting his case strongly.' [Glasgow.] If he set out to write 
the substance of an interview on the spot, the man interviewed 
would call his attention to the danger of giving offense to one or 
another officeholder, to the possible ultimate detriment of a union 
official. ^I don't want this to come back on me,' would be said. 
Desiring to get at facts irrespective of bias, the investigator would 
at times find that his informant was merely echoing the claims of 
a [political] party. Thereat would rise the query whether the labor 
representative was working politics for labor, or working labor for 
a party, or merely was looking out for the furtherance of his own 
fortunes." 

The pith and point of the matter in the last two chapters will 
doubtless affect the mind of the general reader, and especially of 
the trade unionist, as deeply as anything occupying similar space in 
our joint report. Quotations from participants in a movement em- 
bodying the gist of their experiences, and approved by them after 
reflection, as are the foregoing, strike home, as well directed shots 
reach the bull's eye of a target. 

COMPARATIVE CIVIC PURITY. 

No evidence whatever was produced by our Commission's pro- 
municipalist investigators that Councils in British anti-municipalist 
cities are of a lower grade than in cities much municipalized. And 



COMPARATIVE CIVIC PURITY. 45 

as to the assumed surpassing purity and efficiency of British gov- 
ernment administration compared with the results of oar democ- 
racy, some reflection is due. 

While Investigator Commons was finding the Sheffield and 
Newcastle-on-Tyne Town Councils guilty of inferiority to other 
Town Councils, without giving a single fact on which to base his 
judgment, he had had through me sufficient criticisms of the Coun- 
cil in Glasgow from its own citizens to raise a question as to the 
solid block of virtues with which it was accredited by certain mem- 
bers of our Commission. 

It was, in fact, instructive to me, on my pioneer visit alone to 
Glasgow, to see how little free from political bickerings that para- 
gon city of the municipalists is, as well as how often imputations of 
seeking selfish ends were cast upon many of the city fathers. I had 
before me, as in a set of moving pictures, the onslaughts and melees 
of the hotly contending municipal factions of a big American city. 
The combatants were calling one another the same names, accusing 
one another of the same human failings, as we are accustomed to 
hearing at home in cities not our best. 

The charges of favoritism in appointments made at the Council 
session I attended had the familiar sound of the same charge so 
often heard in American ('ouncil chambers. But I was hardly pre- 
pared for the positive denials made on other questions to direct as- 
sertions regarding what were ascertainable facts, one way or the 
other. The leader of the opposition declared that tramway street 
rectifications, naming one of the streets, had not been charged to 
the tramways department; the convenor (chairman) of the Tram- 
ways Committee flatly contradicted the statement. Lively inter- 
ruptions of a speaker continually imparjted a hilariousness or a wave 
of indignation in the meeting- One Councillor, badgered by oppo- 
nents, refused to proceed in speaking, and took his seat. An oppo- 
nent taunted him with simulating martyrdom. From beginning 
to end the session was spicy. 

The city officials I met talked little before me about one an- 
other, but among other men I met then and since I observed a lib- 
erality in affirming shortcomings in public places satisfactory to 
any Englishman critical of the Scotch. 

There^s ample work yet for the public purifier in Glasgow. 

That city is laughing yet at a Town Councillor who is a hatter 
who had to apologize in the press for putting the name and label of 
a high-class firm in a hat of his own inferior make. The commu- 
nity suffered a blow in its pride when, in recent years, its treasurer 
pleaded guilty to embezzlement and took five years' penalty without 
trial. To believe everyday street rumor and the published asser- 
tions of some of the reformers, the licensing of public houses by the 
Bailies (Aldermen) is attended by crude forms of bribery in ways 
great and small. A Bailie connected with a housepainting firm will 
get the job of painting the hotel from which his influence might 
take away the license — type of a series ox stories imaginable from 
the situation. And that something is fundamentally wrong in the 
municipality's management of the liquor traffic is scandalously evi- 
dent in the frightful horrors of Glasgow's streets after nightfall, 
unparalleled in their degradation in any other city I saw in Great 



4!$ THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

Britain and undreamed of in the poorest sections of New York. 

The tricks commonly attributed to Tammany by our reform- 
ers, but which are known generally to municipal machines, are 
played in Glasgow. "Quite recently," says a pamphlet arraigning 
ihe city goyernment, '^a corporation (municipal) adyertisement 
was withheld from a local paper because the paper had yentured to 
criticise a certain department.'* Again : "Municipal employees, 
from the highest to the lowest, are consciously and unconsciously 
becoming a municipal caste." A business man, actiye in organiza- 
tions fighting municipalism, cannot obtain a city contract, if what 
1 was more than once assured is correct. His name is struck off 
i:he contractors' list. 

In the Council's business, according to the Glasgow Xews, "a 
certain laxity of method har, been preyalent which might yery easily 
lead to serious abuses." This journal giyes an example in which, 
after the Council had passed a bill, one of its clauses, relating to 
compensation, had been altered. In another case a committee 
added a new clause. It is not concealed in Glasgow that the elec- 
tricity department exists under the sufferance of the gas depart- 
ment, with the consequent withering of the local electrical industry. 

Factious organizations in the dominant element striye to in- 
fluence the local elections. There is an Irish Mimicipal Commit- 
tee, a Corporation Workers' Union, a Co-operatiye Municipal Elec- 
tion Committee, an Independent Labor Party Committee, and a 
Glasgow Central Liberal Association, "to secure the return of Lib- 
eral representatiyes to all local boards." Good game, hunters a- 
plenty. 

"Glasgow's municipal enterprises haye nearly abolished taxa- 
tion," was a bit of news going the rounds of the municipal owner- 
ship press of America two years ago. By the official reports, the 
Glasgow municipal debt is now £1^,986,400, against £9,049,065 in 
1898; the total of rates and taxes, 8s. 3d. on the pound, against 
4s. lid. in 1890; the total of assessments, for municipal purposes 
only, £911,48-1, against £628,T89 in 1898. The problem of munic- 
ipal tenements is at present complicated, with 15,069 houses unoccu- 
pied, out of a total of 163,42T. 

Fiye years ago the Eatepayers' Federation began exposing the 
unsatisfactory auditing of GlasgoAy's accounts. More recently it 
entered suit to preyent tlie city from expending money in the pro- 
motion of a land yalues taxation bill in Parliament. On both these 
issues the municipality has (June, 1908) surrendered, after a costly 
litigation. The auditing methods recommended by the Eatepayer-' 
Association haye been adopted; the inroads on the Common Good 
must be stopped ; the expenditure in promoting the taxation of land 
yalues bill has ceased, as illegal. Of the £2,45 T spent £1,685 was 
got back from other municipalities. 

As is generally the case in Great Britain, the bookkeeping of 
the general city accounts in connection with the municipal under- 
takings accounts haye resulted in Glasgow in a wide disbelief in the 
soundness of the city's metliods. AYhile the current receipts and ex- 
penditures of an imdertaking in any single year may be correctly 
set forth, questions of interest, renewals, depreciation, and sums 
properly chargeable to original cost, to street improvements, and to 
general municipal administration leave it undetermined as to what 



"J. J. GRIFFIN & SONS." 47 

really is the financial condition of the undertaking. On July 10, 
1908, for example, the leading editorial in the Glasgow "Herald'' 
began: "Yesterday the co]"poration [Town Council] treated itself 
to what might be described as at least a half dress debate uDon the 
-disposal of the tramway surplus — a discussion which must provide 
considerable amusement for those critics of municipal accounting 
who hold, as we do, that there is not yet any palpable surplus to di- 
vide.^^ 

The Citizens' Union deplores the lack of co-ordination of Glas- 
gow's municipal departments ; "Their heads are colonels, and there 
is no general." A leading lawyer states publicly that the local law 
is a labyrinth. The enormously increased duties of Councillors 
with the rapid municipalization of various enterprises serves to keep 
busy citizens out of the Council. The petty graft of Councillors of 
small calibre — such as running up questionable hotel bills while 
travelling, going third class and charging up first class fares — 
keeps gossip of possibly greater underhand graft alive. 

All is not smooth and "superior" in Glasgow's municipal af- 
fairs. A local scribe, noting its difiiculties, speaks of the city's 
^'litigation, annexation, confiscation, federation, consolidation, mu- 
nicipalization, street registration, land values taxation." Each of 
these polys3dlables designates a public bone of contention or a mu- 
nicipal disaster, such as the telephone fiasco. 

11. 

One of the men most prominently in view in London when our 
Commission was in that city was Mr. T. McKinnon Vfood. When 
he appeared at one of our sessions he was introduced by Eobert Don- 
ald, Editor of the Daily Chronicle, as the leader of the Progressives 
in the London County Council. There was no doubt that he occu- 
pied that position. He led the Progressive side in the debate in 
the Council ; he was at one time chairman of the body ; he appeared 
before committees of the House of Commons on behalf of the Coun- 
cil; his name as leader was in the newspapers every day. 

But something happened to him a year ago. It forms a story 
which in New York would be rehearsed by the newspapers endlessly 
to a public man's disadvantage. In England, however, matters af- 
fecting private character may be printed immediately in connec- 
tion with public proceedings, but are not to be dilated upon after- 
ward. So nothing comes out in the newspapers at the present time 
in relation to this episode in which Mr. Wood figured, though his 
friends and his opponents whisper of the damage his reputation has 
suffered through its developments. 

Some one, in February, 1907, called the attention of the West- 
minster City Council (London has two "cities" and tw^enty-eight 
boroughs, each with a Council), to the fact that a "cellar flap" 
(street cellar door) had been set in the public way in front of the 
premises of J. J. Griffin & Sons, scientific instrument makers, Kean 
street, Kingsway. As permission for this cellar-flap had been re- 
fused by the Council, it set up an inquiry. The London County 
Gouncil replied, in response to a communication, that plans of pave- 
ment lights were approved by it in December, 1904, and as the only 
departure from the plans in this case was that one of the lights had 
been hinged so as to act as a cellar-flap, the Council would take no 



48 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

proceedings. The Westminster City Council thereupon protested 
against the exceptional treatment accorded to Messrs. J. J. Griffin 
& Sons. In printing a report of tliese proceedings the Daily Mail 
asked, "Who are Messrs. J. J. Griffin & Sons?" The Financial 
News, in reply, printed a three-column article which showed that 
J. J. Grifhn & Sons, contractors for the London County Council, 
were, to the extent of nearly 50 per cent, Mr. T. McKinnon Wood. 
The leader of the Progressives had bought shares in the company 
in 1899, and became a director in 1900. In 1905 he was in ail 
possessed of 4,247 shares out of 9,990 and the ten founders' shares. 

Some one with a memory now recalled that Messrs. J. J. Griffin 
had been formerly on premises which had been demolished in mak- 
ing the great Holborn-to-Strand improvement, the new broad, cen- 
tral street of which became Kingsway. The relevant documents 
looked up, it came out that Messrs. J. J. Griffin & Son, in lieu of 
their leasehold in the premises demolished, had been given by the 
London County Council a lease for fifty years of a site equal in 
area to that abandoned, at the same rental, together with £16,000 
cash compensation ! 

A sub-committee of the London County Council investigated 
the connection of Mr. Wood with the Griffin firm. It reported, 
Feb. 25, that from 1889 to 1897 various schemes before the Council 
for the Holborn-to-Strand improvement were rejected, and that the 
one proposed in 1896, by v/hich the Griffin leasehold premises were 
to be taken, was abandoned, and that Mr. Wood voted against all 
these schemes. Further, in 1897 the Improvements Committee 
had devoted its attention to a scheme tliat would have avoided the 
street on which the Griffin premises were situated. To the point 
that had been raised that the Griffin firm had moved from a side 
street into the premises demolished when it was known they might 
be taken for the improvement, the sub-committee said there was 
nothing that would justify them in assuming that any other than 
business considerations actuated the firm to so remove. In 1897 
its sales were four times as much as in 1890, and in 1907 three 
times those of 1897. The staff increased from 35 in 1897 to 138 
in 1906. "There was no doubt," the committee said, "that in tho 
year 1898 Mr. Wood (who was then chairman of the Council) was 
aware that the [Griffin] site would be taken." "The question for 
us is whether he took steps to inform the Council of his interest in 
the property," though at that time there was no legal obligation, as 
there now is, upon a member to disclose his interest in a question 
before the Council. The committee found three members to whom 
Mr. Wood had mentioned his interest in the firm, but the Clerk of 
the Council from 1896 to 1900 never had the matter brought to his 
knowledge. As to the Griffin Council contracts, the committee re- 
ported that in number they were considerably more than other firms 
obtained — but as a rule they supplied the cheapest article and were 
in a better position to supply certain apparatus than some of their 
competitors. And thus the committee somewhat perfunctorily re- 
cited a set of facts that on their face lessened the showing against 
Mr. Wood, who had already made his explanations in the daily press. 

A correspondent of tlie Morning Advertiser, Feb. 12, had, how- 
ever, with particulars as to dates, quoted from the records to show 
that the Holborn-to-Strand scheme adopted in 1898 had differed 



1 



THE POhlTlClAN. 4& 

from that recommended in 1892, and again in 1895, in only one 
important point, a bifurcation at the southern end of the great new 
street, in no wise affecting the Griffin site. The disturbance of this 
site was contemplated by the Improvements Committee from year 
to year. Mr. T. McKinnon Wood, as chairman of the Council, at- 
tended as an ex-officio member 23 of the 36 sessions in 1898 of the 
Improvements Committee, rdiich, on July 5, when Mr. Wood was- 
in the chair, unanimously decided tliat the best scheme was that 
recommended by the same committee in 1892 and 1896. The 
lilorning Advertiser's correspondent concludes, after a column of 
citations from Council and Committee proceedings: "It was im- 
possible, therefore, that any county Councillor could have gone into 
Sardinia street [to the Griffin site] without being aware that he was 
on the line of improvement, which must be scheduled under the re- 
coupment scheme." 

I heard professed two sets of opinions on this case in London. 
Some cautious and closely interested observers hold that the Com- 
mittee's report absolved Mr. Wood. Otherwise, plain spoken citi- 
zens, just as deeply interested, maintained that he is discredited, 
even with his own associates in private, and that his useful career 
is ended, as time will show. The cellar-flap privilege, the great in- 
crease in the business of Griffin & Sons, the compensation, the pub- 
lic ignorance that Mr. W^ood was so much also Griffin & Sons, here 
is circumstantial evidence most disturbing. 

In that land of keeping mum on anti-patriotic topics, partly 
through national habit and partly through terrors of the law, the 
matter is barred from public discussion. But its echoes would still 
from time to time caU forth black headlines in the evening papers 
had the event occurred in i^ew York. America would have one 
more occasion to hang her head -for "the shame of her cities." And 
had Investigator Commons found any such case among the Mod- 
erate or Labor-Liberal Councillors of Sheffield or Newxastle-upon- 
Tyne, he would have made the most of this bit of testimony to gen- 
eralize on the "inferiority" of the Councils of these two cities. But 
he never produced one word of any testimony of the kind. He 
could not. 

III. 

Illustrative of accepting appearances as the solid background of 
fact is the impression somewhat prevalent among tourist Ameri- 
cans that government in Great Britain, municipal or general, shows 
little trace of the flaws they hear so loudly decried at home. But 
the American observer who tarries awhile and takes note is awak- 
ened first to the fact that current political happenings at times tell 
a familiar tale, and secondly, to the truth that where we blab and 
re-thrash public scandals the British method prescribes a short 
story and a long silence. 

Occasionally some of the remarks of newspaper editors and 
correspondents go far to lift the curtain to the visiting American. 
A Yarmouth man writes to a London daily newspaper: "From 
Imowledge gained from forty years' insight into the municipal and 
parliamentary life of this town, I unhesitatingly state that our local 
government is rotten to the core. Open bribery has been practiced 
on both sides, and open treating at municipal and parochial con- 
tests. The landlord holds the whip over the tenant ; the employer 



50 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

i 

coerces the employee; the customer boycotts the tradesman." 

After Kidderminster leturned to Parliament a Liberal, many 
of the wealthy men of the district, mostly manufacturers, refused 
to renew their subscriptions to the benevolent funds of the Carpet 
AVeavers' Association, with its staunch Liberal vote. A candidate 
may subscribe to a local cricket club, local charities, or local amuse- 
ments, to gain popularity, or refuse to subscribe when not paid back 
in popularity on election day. Said a Member of Parliament to me 
who had lived in Xew York: '^American politicians carry on their 
doings before the curtain ; ours know what part of the play should 
go on when the curtain is down." 

The London borough scandals have had their airing in the 
American press: — West Ham, with its workhouse bedroom suite 
that cost $250; Poplar, with its poor rate in 1907 just double that 
of 1891 ; others, with their unusual expense accounts for Mayor and 
Coimcillors, their petty grafts of handsome pocketbooks for Council 
members and friends. The small peculations in 1)oroughs, how- 
ever, pale before their egregious business blunders. Marylebone 
decided to take in hand its own electric lighting; the law required 
that it must buy out the local company, which offered to sell for 
$4,500,000. The Council rejected the price, went to law over it, 
spent $300,000 on attoriievs and costs, and in the end paid 
$6,000,000. 

The consequences of British governmental incapacity are de- 
scribed in the London press in the same headlines as we see used 
for the same chronic difficulties in America: "Discarded War 
Stores Resold to the Army at Great Profit !" "Strong Condemna- 
tion of London Food Factories !" "Nation's Printing Bill ; Great 
Waste on L^seless DocumcDts." "The Adulterations of Butter." 

The predatory political machine in Great Britain has been 
limited by opportunity. The hoodlum masses can't be bought 
cheap because as empty sacks they have no vote. The only elective 
officeholders are members of the Councils and of Parliament, un- 
paid. The octopus landlords forestall the municipal jobs set up in 
American suburban districts by shoals of little real estate sharks. 
The public waste incident to the colossal development of great 
cities in a rich and prodigal new world is absent. Xo increase of 
population of forty-five millions in forty years has scrambled multi- 
farious privileges through legislative bodies to the strong and un- 
scrupulous. 

The conditions for exposure and public scandal-mongery are 
also limited. The British sensational press is bridled by the law. 
The ten thousand busy and reckless partisan newspaper pens that 
dirty public reputations in America with impunity would rust in 
idleness in Great Britain, where with exemplary damages, "The 
greater the truth the greater is the libel." 

As temptation is restricted, purity may rise proportionately. 
Reputation at times is a sequence of covering up. Seas exist be- 
neath the surface sea. 

THE PASSING OF THE MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP FEVER. 

In two short years a change has come o'er the spirit of the 
dreams told by pro-municipal prophets. To look no further than 
the sphere of the Civic Federation's investigation and questions of 
close interest to its Commission's membership, we see a steady 



A PASSING MANIA. 51 

movement away from municipal ownership and toward regulation. 

The first point to be noted is that in its report to the Commis- 
sion the Committee of Twenty-One took a position decidedly against 
the usual propositions for municipal ownership. Not one of the 
municipal undertakings investigated in the United States had ful- 
filled all the requirements laid down by the committee for proof 
of continuous highly successful municipal operation. On exam- 
ination of these undertakings, which were examples selected by the 
municipal ownership members of the committee, representative men 
of the movement found out that what they wanted was usually 
some other ideal of municipal ownership than that investigated. Of 
the two most highly creditable examples, one was of the exceptional 
class of water supply, which may be a failure in the next adminis- 
tration, and the other, an electrical undertaking, of an order too 
small for a model of sure value to large cities. The minds of ob- 
servers who had carefully followed the investigation were undoubt- 
edly influenced by the report to pay heed in future to methods of 
control rather than of ownership. 

In Philadelphia, the campaign of the municipal ownershi]) 
advocates against the renewal for twenty years of the lease of the 
United Gas Improvement Company failed by a vote of 54 to 22 in 
Council, which, the "Public Ledger" said, "very fairly represent- 
ed the preponderance of public opinion on the subject.'^ Conse- 
quently until 1927 that city will have gas of the first quality and an 
admirable service, for which the company, by its figures, receives 73 
cents per 1,000 cubic feet. The company pays into the city 10 
cents out of the $1 per 1,000 paid by the consumer, serves the nearly 
30,000 street lamps free, and at the end of the lease turns the entire 
plant back to the municipality. 

In Chicago, the "immediate" municipal ownership movement 
of the Dunne administration has, under the votings of the com- 
munity, come to nothing but a regulation that puts possible munic- 
ipal ownership ofi: to a remote generation. 

In Cleveland, Prof. Bemis is figuring for the information of 
the country how many million dollars have been saved to the com- 
munity under a three-cent fare through a new private street-car 
company instead of through lines owned by the city. 

In New York, the present summer has witnessed the curtain 
fall on a sensational municipal campaign farce begun three years 
ago. In pleading guilty to accepting a bribe and being fined $1,000, 
one of the eleven Municipal Ownership Aldermen elected in that 
campaign has set an end to all doubts of the story that the leader 
of the group, caught in a tiap made in a newspaper office, had bar- 
gained to sell the eleven votes on the occasion of an official act for 
$5,500. The shriek of this stamp of municipal reformer has been 
drowned in a guffaw from New York's amused criminals of all 
-classes. 

But the serious work of regulation, led by the Governor of the 
State, bringing into existence the Public Service Commission, is 
actually fast converting to its support the mass of men who had 
spoken of themselves as municipalization advocates. The first 
annual report of the Commission for Greater New York, just issued, 
showing its reforms of transportation abuses and service deficiencies, 
and its prevention of over-capitalization and cut-throat stock-job- 



52 THE CIVIC FEDERATION L.\BOR REPORT. 

bing competition that would mean eventual combination, has gone 
far to satisfy the desires for reform of practical opponents of the 
methods b}' which certain public utility agencies had plundered the 
community. 

In Xew York, also, the last municipal electricit}' plant has 
gone out of existence. 

There is not the slightest probability that any of the private 
American undertakings investigated by the Civic Federation Com- 
mission will be taken over by the municipality which it serves. But 
there is a probability thkt any one of the municipal undertak- 
ings, except water, may be sold to private agencies by the community 
by which it is now owned. The author of a work on the subject 
recently issued gives a list of thirty mimicipal electric undertakings 
sold to companies in the fourteen months ending February last, 
with no transfers conversely. 

The present sentiment in the trades union world as to public 
ownership in general may be indicated by the vote taken at Xorfolk 
last Xovember at the convention of the American Federation of 
Labor on government ownership of railroads: Delegates for, 50; 
against, 154. 

Two years ago, when the Civic Federation Commission was in 
Great Britain, a labor member — an enthusiastic municipal owner- 
ship man — on one occasion, in the presence of a circle of British 
unionist Socialists, said to me, not gently: "You can't stand up 
to-day in a union meeting in the United States and oppose munic- 
ipal ownership I'^ If so : Time works its changes. I can to-day. 

In Great Britain, during my visit in the spring of this year, the 
leader of the Municipal Employees' Association said to me : "There's 
a lull at present in the municipal ownership movement." The same 
week the Secretary of the London Municipal Eeformers informed 
me : "The pro-municipal ists could not to-day initiate any new 
municipal scheme whatever. That wave is all passed over. The 
Count}' Council is now trying to find out where it has really left us 
^financially." 

This "lull" is ever^TN-here in Britain. The continually rising 
tide of local taxes, the characters taking a hand in the game of poli- 
tics, the exultations of the Socialists over municipalist victories, tlie 
disappointing outcome of the municipal ventures already made ex- 
cept in undertakings in a few large cities, the utter failures such 
as the Thames steamboats and municipal telephones, and the evi- 
dences of the growing political strength of public employees — these 
points are more frequently the subjects of comment now than they 
could possibly have been five years ago at the stage at that time of 
public experience. 

Even in Glasgovr, municipal ownership is on the defensive. 
Its telephone, its housing scheme, its liquor traffic, its increase in 
rates, its questionable methods of promoting partisan bills in Par- 
liament have brought their reaction. 

I found in April in England that prominent trade union m^en 
who had been elected to legislative office were by no means disap- 
pointed at the recent turn in municipal affairs. They were begin- 
ning to speak their mind. "Some partisans," said one of them, 
referring to the radicals who had been pushing municipalism in the 
unions, "would cut off free speech." I heard much talk about com- 
pelling the Socialists and semi-Socialists to retire to the background. 



THE CHANGE IN JOHN BURNS. 53 

I asked the tailor ex-Mayor of Battersea who was to be the leader 
in this uprising in the unions against the extremists. He instantly 
replied : "John Burns.'' 

The change in twenty years in John Burns' views and activ- 
ities is parallel to that of many thousands of workingmen in Great 
Britain who have moved from crude radicalism to opportunism by 
the political route. Burns, who once waved the red flag and com- 
manded the plaudits of twenty thousand men in a single crowd 
while in his stentor's voice he proclaimed "the class struggle" and 
called on the British workers to "take into their own hands the land, 
machinery, capital, and all means of production," is now retaining 
the votes of the masses in a course in which he is gradually freeing 
himself from the network of Socialist and municipal devices that 
have in practice proved fatile. His speeches in Parliament have 
indicated, as the thermom.eter does the weather, especially during 
the last two years, the modification in the tendencies of the British 
working class voters. His views on the causes of pauperism and the 
public methods of preventing poverty have undergone a radical 
change. 

On January 30 of tlie present year, in the House of Commons, 
the Socialist-Ijabor members Snowden, Macdonald, and Pete Cur- 
ran, during a debate on the unemployed problem, taunted Burns 
with abandoning his old principles. He had recently jeered at pro- 
posals "made by doss-house economists and soup-kitchen reform- 
ers." In his reply Burns said ("Daily Telegraph") : "Pauperism 
would continue to grow if the unemployed movement was exploited 
by the type of persons who came to London not to work but to live 
on public funds, private charity, and the eleemosynary aid which 
was intended for better people." "There had never been more non- 
sense talked about pauperism in Great Britain and Ireland than 
in the last few years." "The time had come when the provision of 
pauperizing relief in this country should be arrested, and they [the 
government] would concentrate themselves on bedrock causes and 
transient palliatives which would lead to permanent reform. He 
wanted no more state workshops or municipal expedients, which 
would accentuate the difficulty and make the remedy worse than 
the disease." 

Burns is up with the procession of English voters. Prepon- 
derant working class sentiment has shown at the polls that it will 
not soon again demand more municipal dwellings and workshops, 
river steamboats, tramway supply foundries, or any of the class of 
"municipal expedients" which have had their popularity in the 
prospect and the'ir disappointment in the fact. 

London, which when our Commission visited it two years ago 
had officially municipal ownership in full swing, has undergone a 
popular revulsion against it. In the twenty-eight boroughs hardly 
enough municipal ownership Councillors remain to maintain a 
discussion. In the London County Council, also, the Socialist-Pro- 
gressive majority has disappeared, and the opposition is carefully 
looking into the true financial condition of the municipal ventures 
so hopefully launched in the heyday of optimistic municipalisni. 
If there was any one scheme which seemed to its supporters certain 
of great profits it was that of the London County Council tram- 
ways. Its outcome to the present time may be taken as a criterion 



54 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

of the very best that rampant municipalization in London has given 
to the world. And what actually is the result? At a meeting of 
our Committee of Twenty-One, at St. Ermin's Hotel, July 3, 1906, 
to hear leading representatives of the municipal ownersliip move- 
ment in Great Britain, Mr. T. McKinnon Wood said of the County 
Council's tramways: "The total capital is £4,818,000. This in- 
cludes the purchase money. The sinking fund is about £450,000. 
Of the £4,818,000 capitaf, we have paid off £607,000, and of that 
£607,000 about £450,000 is sinking fund. We have also put a 
sum of £290,000 to relief of rates." But, alas ! on March 28, 1908, 
a special report on the tramways, made by the President of the 
Institute of Chartered Accountants and others, was laid before 
the County Council. In brief, it showed that the £293,592 that 
had been applied 1897-1904 in relief of rates ought to have been 
applied to making up a loss exceeding £1,000,000 overlooked in the 
Council's methods of bookkeeping on the displacement of the horse 
traction system. Besides, on "improvements undertaken or pro- 
posed in connection with tramway schemes," "a substantial, but as 
yet unascertained, proportion of £387,438," should have been 
charged to tramways capital account, whereas it was set down to 
the general improvement account, and on ''improvements for the 
purpose of general traffic," "a considerable, but as yet unascer- 
tained, proportion of £864,121 should also have been charged to 
tramways capital account." That is, up to March 31, 1907, the 
London County Council tramwavs, instead of earning profits of 
$1,500,000, were anywhere from ^$4,000,000 to $6,000,000 behind 
hand on the accounts meationed, with nearly another million dollars 
arrearages on renewals and central office charges. Here is one of 
the fatal flaws in municipal ownership : By an erroneous alloca- 
tion of costs the general municipal treasury may for a time carry 
the burden of low fares, blunders, and liberality in general — to 
comiC to a disastrous end on a day of judgment literally as sure to 
arrive as taxation. The fatal flaw of municipalism is in the 
finances ; that is, deficits must be made up by taxes. 

A NECESSARY PERSONAL EXPLANATION. 

I may now have convinced the reader — (1) that Investigator 
Commons defied the lightning of truth the day he sought to blast 
me in my absence; and (2) that in my review I helped to bring 
out the vices in municipal ownership and operation that on being 
seon carr}^ public support instead to the principle of control. But 
this leaves many — perhaps most — of my readers who do not know 
me still not satisfied on a point regarding m3'self. However they 
may have veiled their allusions to the motives of personal interest 
affecting me, some men I have met have had in mind : "AMiat were 
you in this investigation for?" "What did you get out of it?" 
When Investigator Commons told the Civic Federation membership 
of my acts as investigator and reviewer, which to him were "im- 
possible," he knew well the injury he could thus work me with 
many among those classed as "of the public" and "of the employers/' 

Certain candid men, English or American, among the hun- 
dreds with wliom this work has brought me in contact, have put to 
me queries indirectly, by comment : "You have a good thing on this 
Commission." "You'll come out well, with your economical habits." 



A NECE&SARY PERSONAL EXPLANATION. 55 

"In England we hear that American labor men on government or 
other commissions receive large salaries.^' "You are in company 
with big capitalists." "We Labor delegates in England can seldom 
afford to put up at first-class hotels." 

This from the labor column of a New York evening newspaper, 
after a line to the effect that the labor men of the Twent3^-0ne all 
had good trade union records : "They should be favorable to public 
ownership; but I happen to know that some of them are not — why, 
I am at a loss to understand." And with it a sermon on the evil 
intent of the capitalists backing the inquiry. A book reviewer in 
an engineering weekly paper, quoting a part of Investigator Com- 
mons' double-edged reluctant personal explanation, admires his 
"ideals" as therein expressed and lauds his impartiality, but finds 
that my review, "valuable" from my "being a trade unionist," is 
only "an argument." 

When Investigator Commons and I traveled together in Great 
Britain I usually found that the second day we were in any city I 
was being classed by the political unionists as "with the capitalists." 

So, to satisfy the last possible query, and to make plain the 
principle on which I do what public work I can, I shall tell now 
what I made out of my work for this Commission, and, while on the 
subject, out of various other tasks as labor representative that I 
have undertaken. My time of service for labor warrants me in 
putting an end to my habit of reticence in the matter. 

The salaries of the Commission's American engineers and ac- 
countants, and of those Commissioners that gave up their regular 
positions for a time, and of the labor investigators, were placed 
about the point of their accustomed earnings or a small percentage 
higher. Mine was put at $200 a month, full time ; the United Gar- 
ment Workers of America paid me $30 a week for getting out 
their periodical, leaving me a day or two a week free for occasional 
other earnings. The allowance for hotel and transportation ex- 
penses for Commissioners and investigators was $10 a day, except 
during the ocean passages, which took a special sum apart. 

Toward the close of my engagement I drew up a memorandum, 
copies of which I gave separately to two members of the Civic 
Federation. As to salary, it showed that within the time of my 
connection with the Commission I had declined to draw anything 
for a w^eek at one stage of the work and two months at another, the 
latter being time I spent m New York, without earnings, waiting 
for the meeting of the Twenty-One, before returning to Europe, 
April, 1907. As to expenses, the sums I drew v/ere less than the 
amount I was entitled to draw by $1,575. These two items of un- 
paid time and undraw^n expenses I had had it in my power tc con- 
vert into more than $2,000 cash to my account, with no dispute 
about it. I also paid out of my salary, without rendering bills, my 
quota of certain extra traveling expenses incurred while with the 
Commissioners on tour in Great Britain, all my own entertainment 
bills for labor men and otliers while interviewing them, the outlay 
for several trips in America which some of the Commissioners might 
have deemed not necessary, the unitemizable expenditures for wear 
and tear and accident in travel, my recent trip to England to inter- 
view managers, and the petty expenses connected with the Com- 
mission since April 1, 1907. This defence against the attack o.t* 



56 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

Investigator Commons I print at my own cost, every copy being 
issued gratuitously. 

The expense account I handed in, instead of being made up 
according to actual outlay or simply by drawing the maximum, as 
to which all sending in expense bills could exercise their option, 
was set down at railroad fare and the per diem allowed, not by my 
own richer typographical union, but by the garment workers. I de- 
clined my salary for the months in New York that it might be seen 
that I was waiting to perform my duty when the Twenty-One met 
and not to draw money. 

After thus waiting from December 1, 1906, until in Febru- 
ary, 1907, I was made Secretary of the Committee of Four, and I 
drew up suggestions for the first drafts of sections of its report. 
When, as the weeks dragged on, it became evident that months more 
must elapse before the expected meeting would take place, I re- 
signed this position and went my way. With other work open to 
me on the Commission, I could have been on salary with it at least 
six months longer. 

My "good thing" therefore has resulted in less — by hundreds 
of dollars — than I would have earned had I remained with the Gai- 
ment Workers during the time I was with the Commission. 

During the months I was waiting I did some work for the 
Civic Federation. I assisted in the details of getting up the annual 
meeting, collected facts of record and interviewed persons in con- 
nection with its child labor work, and wrote and delivered an ad- 
dress on its welfare department which was issued in pamphlet form. 
For these services I declined the pay repeatedly offered me by the 
Manager. 

Just before leaving New York I wrote Investigator Commons 
the foregoing points in outline. 

I have been doing this kind of work, to the extent that I have 
been able, for a quarter of a century. 

When, five years ago, anticipating its sale to a politician, I 
bought the New York "Unionist," then the semi-official publication 
of Typographical Union No. 6 (which has seven thousand dues- 
paying members, its scale being from $21 to $33 a week), every 
President, or every living representative of the presidenc)^, for more 
than twenty years wrote that from his personal experience with me 
he had confidence in my intention to put high character into their 
little fortnightly craft paper — which, unfortunately, on two occa- 
sions had been carried into practical politics. I issued it during a 
Mayoralty campaign one year and a Presidential campaign the 
following AAdthout mention of politics in either reading or advertis- 
ing columns. I sold the paper ten months before an election for 
the same price I had paid for it. Its income I had put into its im- 
provement, its issuance an avocation unrequited by profits. My 
chief satisfaction was in contributing to the credit of my organiza- 
tion. 

I was two years and ten months Chairman-Treasurer (mana- 
ger) of the printers' farm. One year we had more than ninety 
members working on park land; the next year sixty-three persons 
on a farm of 166 acres. Writing afterward, the Secretary-Treas- 
urer of No. 6 said : "I can testifv that in the years you were on the 



A NECESSARY PERSONAL EXPLANATION. 57 

Parm Committee you not only never drew a cent from the union 
for either salary or expenses, but as Chairman-Treasurer you 
handed to me, as contributions from outside parties, the sum of 
$1,500, which went to the support of the farm." 

For years I was on one committee or another in this great 
union — on the out-of-work committee several times, aggregating a 
y^ear and a half ; on special work for families of impoverished mem- 
bers; on investigating the accounts for two strike years, involving 
the auditing of thousands of receipts and expenditures amounting 
to more than $100,000, a piece of work taking sixteen weeks of the 
committeemen's time not given to their regular office work. The 
imion has its scale of allowances for such committee work. I never 
drew anything. 

As Samuel Gompers will testify, while I held in the years 
1892-'95 the position of General Lecturer on Initiative and Eefer- 
endum, American Federation of Labor, traveling much in New 
England, New York, New Jersey, and to the Pacific Coast, lectur- 
ing on the subject, I never drew a dollar from the Federation for 
salary or expenses. My terms to organizations of all kinds, labor 
or civic, that paid me at all, were my hotel and transportation bilL. 
I uniformly gave my time for nothing. In numerous cases I paid 
my own expenses. 

I paid my own way when, during four months in Switzerland 
in 1888, I got up the facts relating to that country in my "Direct 
Legislation." I gave away thousands of copies of the work. I 
wrote numerous articles on the question for all sorts of publications, 
receiving pay for less than a score. I published the early numbers 
of the "Direct Legislation Eecord" at a loss of full 50 per cent of 
its cost. I contributed in cash to the formation of direct legislation 
leagues. 

My services as editor under salary on official labor union 
organs, in all covering pei-iods summing up four years, have been 
compensated at union rates. But the years in addition during 
which I have given my time to the social reform press have yielded 
me far less — perhaps 35 per cent — than what I have regularly 
earned while at my occupation on morning newspapers. In 1883- 
'84 my writing for the popular workingmen's paper of New York 
was gratuitous; in 188f-'89, as labor editor on the weekl}^ paper 
which started as a "land and labor" advocate, I voluntarily reduced 
my salary 20 per cent after a few weeks' work, and it was never 
restored; as associate editor, 1889-'93, on another social reform 
weekly, my salary was one-third less than what I immediately drew 
on going back to proof-reading on a morning daily. In writing 
articles on labor or politico-economic subjects my rule has been to 
give outright to struggling publishers and to gauge my bills to 
others according to their purse and their disposition to let me have 
my full say. Since I decided, twenty-five years ago, to speak out 
my conceptions of human justice, I have written nothing I did not 
wholly believe ; but many occasions naturally have arisen when the 
full expression of my economic faith was not appropriate to the sub- 
ject in hand. 

But — politics? I liaye never handled a dollar of politician^' 
money. I have never asked for office or a vote for myself. I have 
at no time been in politics with either of the great parties. I have 



58 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT 

in no instance traded on iny connection with the labor movement 
for votes or any public position whatever. 

I was active in New York in 1886-'87 as a member of the 
United Labor Party. As Treasurer of the Printing Trades Legion 
of the campaign of 1886 I paid on the wind-up its residuary debtt. 
As Treasurer of the Sixteenth Assembly District up to March, 
1888, I took care of its recurring deficits. As Treasurer of the 
Trade and Labor Conference that submitted demands of organized 
labor to the State Constitutional Convention in 1893-'94, I financed 
its current printing and similar bills, the vouchers of which I yet 
have. As a delegate or committeeman sent frequently to the Albany 
and Trenton state houses in regard to labor or direct legislation 
matters, I never received a fee^ and, w^ith the exception in making 
a trip to call a New York Governor's attention to the Labor Bu- 
reau's neglect of child labor, always paid my own expenses. 

Since the United Labor Party's decline in 1887 I have been 
active in but one political campaign. When Seth Low ran for 
Mayor against the two old parties in 1897, attracted by his labor 
plank and his independence, I did a fair amount of service, with- 
out any form of compensation, as the labor committeemen of that 
year knew. I presided an labor conferences, took off time from m.y 
work to address meetings, and wrote a pamphlet published by the 
campaign committee. 

An opening for "a future," made me by friendly politicians 
of the great parties, has been no rarity. A ladder to climb to the 
respectful consideration of political managers, put before me by the 
small parties, has not been wholly unfamiliar. In 1887 the Central 
Committee of the United Labor Party slated me as candidate for 
State Senator. In 1892 a committee proffered me the nomination 
for Mayor on the Populists' ticket, though I opposed much of their 
platform. In 1897 a place on its county ticket was tendered me by 
the Low party. All declined. 

My theories have brought me to the siudy, not of the game of 
politics, but of a political economy as radical as justice. 

But, it will be asked, "How could this career be followed by 
a Svorkingman' ?" 

I have lived the last quarter of a century without anxiety over 
getting along. First, I have had but one other person to care for, 
and we are both scrupulously watchful in the management of our 
outlay. Day compared with day, my salary in the years I have 
worked as proofreader on a daily newspaper has been more than 
the average earnings of New York's professional men. Two in- 
heritances, of which I was alwavs sure, if I lived, came to me — one 
in 1887, one in 1904— in amount not far from $10,000. When, in 
1883, I decided to braach out into my own preferred channels of 
public service I had, as T yet have, health, a knowledge of the print- 
ing business that promised a continuous opportunity, prospects for 
some provision against old age, and the art of making a dollar 
worth one hundred cents with no waste. 

But when I had been nearly ten years following my chosen 
methods in my own way and with my owti means, not long after I 
began my propaganda for direct legislation, one person convinced 
me that I could do better work wdth an assistance that came with- 
out terms and that could never result in influencing my freedom 
in tliought or action. That one person, alone, I have permitted to 



A NECESSARY PERSONAL EXPLANATION. 50 

give me money unearned by hard labor.. From the fund thus com- 
ing I have drawn to meet a share of the heavier expenses above 
mentioned, to compensate me in part for time lost from work and 
on occasions to aid where there was suffering or feeble human 
endeavor for betterment. 

If on reading this statement any three reputable members "on 
part of the public'^ or "on part of the employers" in the Civic Feder- 
ation should wish further particulars, I shall refer them to Samuel 
Gompers, J. W. Bramwood, and B. A. Larger for decision as to 
whether their inquiry is jnade in good faith and is of moment to 
me or the public, and if these representative labor men should say 
it is, I'll submit in the matter to every point within the searching 
poM^er of an attorney or a committee. 

It is due those gentlemen of the Commission who are connected 
with large enterprises to say that not one of them ever uttered in 
my presence a word tending to influence improperly other members 
or the investigators in the slightest degree. 

I have aimed to convince the reader of the truth of all I have 
herein written, going on to the last question that men, in their 
skepticism, usually raise. Investigator Commons' charges and in- 
sinuations I could ignore only by leaving the impression with the 
non-working class members of the Civic Federation, and citizens in 
general who had read his attack on me, that here possibly was a 
case of a workingman representative, indifferent to his work as in- 
vestigator, abandoning his bounden duty of impartiality and acting 
as counsel for a side that could command a fee. In undertaking to 
reply to him, I could not leave the controversy until it was ex- 
hausted, notwithstanding the tedious work of particularizing and 
correcting his errors of statement and aberrations of view, and de- 
spite my reluctance natural in going into the private matters I 
have detailed. Because Investigator Commons aimed outrageously 
to destroy my life work I have been obliged to show what that life 
work has been. 

Never have I written a single line "in support of the capital- 
ists." In opposing the economic blunder of municipal ownership 
I am "on the side of the capitalists" precisely as in opposing gov- 
ernment ownership of railroads the American Federation of Labor 
and the railroad brotherhoods are on the side of the capitalists. I 
have constantly advocated the principle of withholding legal privil-^ 
eges by which capital may lay tribute on labor. 

I have presented in this record no story of sacrifices; I have 
described a course marked by satisfactions. 

When, contemplating the American trade union movement to- 
day, I realize that the fathers of hundreds of thousands of families 
have through organization obtained in the last quarter of a century 
a reduction of a fifth or more in the day's toil and an advance of a 
fourth or more in wages, to the benefit of their wives and children, 
I am rejoiced that I have been one of the millions in the movement. 
And if in the course of the struggle I have at times put forth a 
helpful suggestion at the needed hour, I am glad I was given the 
opportunity. And further, wdien my views as to a reign of justice 
in society gain once in a while their share of thoughtful attention, I 
feel that the world has paid me whatever debt it may have owed me. 



(Following are the separate reviews of the joint labor report by the 
two labor investigators : ) 

THE LABOR REPORT 



By J. W. SULLIVAN 



My colleague and myself, in closing our joint inquiry as to 
wages and conditions in the British gas undertakings visited, agree 
in saying : 

"Summarizing what precedes, with the exception of the twelve-hour 
stations of the South Metropolitan Company, and taking into account 
the general level of wages in the several localities, it cannot be said that 
there is any material difference between the public and private under- 
takings in the wages of stokers or in the average wages of the shift- 
workers in the retort houses. The differences that occur do not show a 
prevalence one way or the other, but they tend to follow pretty closely 
the general level of wages in the locality, irrespective of whether the 
undertaking is managed by a municipality or by a private company. 
The case of the twelve-hour shifts of the South Metropolitan Company 
is peculiar and requires the discussion of another aspect of the question 
— the amount of work done by the stokers." 

Eelative to the electricity undertakings, the investigation sums 
up: 

"It has been found impossible to make a satisfactory comparison of 
the wages paid in electrical undertakings, on account of the wide differ- 
ences in machinery, equipment, character of work, size of station, range 
of wages and names of occupations. The subdivision of labor varies 
greatly from place to place, and a large establishment with a minute 
subdivision of specialized workers may have extremely high wages for a 
few and extremely low for others, although the names of the occupations 
may be the same as those where the work is less subdivided. A careful 
examination of different payrolls and different stations, however, leads 
to the conclusion that as in the gas undertakings, there is no pre- 
dominating tendency one way or the other, and the differences depend 
mainly upon the differences in the general level of the wages of the 
locality." 

The prevailing wage policy in the British municipalized un- 
dertakings investigated is to pay the skilled workmen trade union 
rates and the unskilled "a minimum wage." The conclusions in 
the foregoing paragraphs refer to the mechanics and semi-skilled 
men among the gas and electrical workers. With such exceptions 
as an alleged overstocking of the works with labor, as at a munic- 
ipal gas station in Manchester mentioned in the report, and a 
favoring of hand lal^or in preference to machine labor, as in the 
Leicester municipal gas works, skilled or partly skilled labor had 
about equal chances with the two forms of management, municipal 
and company . That is, in these two industries, in all but the 
most poorly paid forms of labor, municipalization has not raised 



THE LABOR REPORT. 61 



the wage or workday conditions of the employees above conditions 
in the private undertakings, the exceptions noted above showing 
the dubious advantages of possibly providing municipal employees 
with work at the expense of the community or furnishing them 
with a leverage for the play of politics. 

But with respect to "common, unorganized labor" the inves- 
tigators found a difference somewhat favorable to British municipal 
employees. The report cites facts that explain the causes. 
(1) The municipal laborer is a picked man. (2) This class of 
labor offers an especial field for the Municipal Employees' Asso- 
ciation, the new political trade unionists, and the Socialists and 
humanitarians of all walks of life who, demanding for labor at 
least "a living wage,*' desire to redeem municipal employment 
from participation in Great Britain's almost universal sweatshop 
labor market. Steady, ablebodied and capable of exerting on city 
councils a combined pressure, municipal unskilled laborers, no 
matter how organized or whether organized at all, obtain better 
terms than the employing councillors accord to the men they hire 
in their private capacity for similar work. 

Councils recognize a "minimum wage" — a level below which 
a municipality will not fix any grade of pay. Yet it is to be noted 
that the percentage of the municipal minimum above "the pri- 
vate minimum," as quoted by the labor investigators, may in some 
communities signify little more than a comparison between the 
city's rate for the choice among laborers and the general rate for 
those private undertakings which employ men in perhaps the least 
requited of occupations. That is, the municipal laborers, shown 
by rigid examination as to physique and character to be sound, 
steady and nearer youth than age, earn more than the mass in 
the overstocked labor market, including the unreliable, the gray- 
haired and other classes unqualified for municipal work. On the 
average the money difference is shown by but a few shillings a week, 
though in selecting certain extremes for comparison a considerable 
percentage may be figured out. The widest contrast, at Leicester, 
9s., very probably reflects the same influences that sent that city's 
Socialist representatives to Parliament. In several of the cities 
visited, indeed perhaps all, certain large private establishments 
give, in various ways, approximately the same wage terms as the 
municipality, or even better, as at Cadbury's and Tangey's, in 
Birmingham. 

In the case of the South Metropolitan Gas Company of Lon- 
don — to quote an example in which a system has been worked out 
independently of the leveling-up influences bearing on city gov- 
ernments, the co-operative features of which, examined at such 
length, do not attract the unqualified admiration of the investi- 
gators — this is to be said: Its employees' stock in the company 
represents a larger sum than is similarly possessed by any equal 
number of laborers of the class in England, and its provisions for 
sickness, death and old age are unusual. Ninety odd per cent, 
of the employees of these works save something. A Labor Liberal 



<62 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

r 

member of Parliament eaid of the company to one of our com- 
mittee: ^'A gas worker can nowhere get a better job." The Co- 
operative Union accepts the works as a genuine example of co- 
operation. The shift men where twelve hours are worked them- 
selves adopted that workday by a vote. The company asserts that 
it never opposed union labor in its mechanical departm^ents, and 
withdrew its opposition to the gasworkers' union a few vears after 
ihe strike of 1889. 

Turning now to the tramways and light railways, we find 
3,400 miles in the United Kingdom, the number operated by all 
the companies, some 1,500, being less than the mileage owned by 
a single American company in several instances. The number 
of miles operated by the seven companies and municipalities in- 
vestigated by our experts reached perhaps 500, about Boston's 
mileage. The British tramway wage situation can only be seen 
correctly in the light of mimicipal developments out of what were 
company undertakings, the latter invariably being far different 
in their status as to property and degree of progress from the street 
railways of America. Xo street car undertaking in Great Britain 
has ever been a "privaie" enterprise in the sense in which the 
word is applied in this country. The twenty-one years' term of 
the franchise, the veto of company petitions by village authorities, 
the enormous cost of Parliamentary powers and local assents, and 
various other restrictions non-existent in the United States, shackle 
and impoverish British tramway company management and con- 
sequently forbid an intelligent investigator to employ British ex- 
ample to illustrate possibilities in America through change from 
private to municipal ownership. British tramways have always 
heen semi-municipal. The English field of tramway exploitation, 
if common report in Britain is correct, has been occupied by only 
the most venturesome promoters, and their work has certainly not 
been ordinarily successful in the development of the industry, as 
compared with American standards and results. The burdens of 
the companies have usually permitted them to win only the barest 
returns by means of "skinning" methods throughout. The larg- 
est private British tramways company passed its dividend last 
July. Whether others of the largest companies will ever meet 
their obligations is a common doubt. As by the terms of their 
franchises all English tramway undertakings may be taken over by 
the municipalities, directors manage their properties with that end 
in view. While the companies seldom equal average private em- 
ployers in ability to pay the wages of municipal tramway under- 
takings, the municipalities investigated by our committee are the 
most famous scenes of notable attempts at social reform carried 
on both by the champions of collectivist ownership and humani- 
tarians endeavoring to mitigate the evils of slum life and to lower 
a general death rate that gave several of the cities in question an 
unenviable reputation. Higher wages in the municipality's tram- 
ways, however, is not the invariable rule. The private Norwich 
tramways manager showed that the company paid for electrical 



THE LABOR REPORT. 63 

workers the same scale as the city, and in some grades claimed 20 
per cent, higher than Ipswich, Yarmouth and Lowestoft. It is 
to be kept in mind also that usually only the most promising un- 
dertakings have been taken over by the cities. As a result, chiefly 
during the transition from horse to electric traction, British munic- 
ipalities have established a lead as to wages and workday, but 
by no means a notable lead, and one not yet finally established. 
Compared, however, with the remarkable changes for the better 
in v^^ages and hours in the American street car industry under 
companies and trade unionism, the best of the British municipal 
labor improvements seem hardly more than trivial. 

Little attention has been given in the report to the class of 
British municipalizers who, with indefinite plans and revolution- 
ary principles, would carry municipal ownership into fields wher- 
ever, in their optimism, tliey imagine promise of a speedy remedy 
for civic abuses or economic betterment for the masses. If any of 
the Utopian schemes of these municipalizers had still bid fair to 
be fulfilled, doubtless the facts would have been given passing 
recognition and the hopeful outlook touched upon. Space would 
have been given to any probability of paying new ventures spring- 
ing out of tried and successful ones. Omission to do so is at least 
to be noted. Eather ar3 there indications in the report that the 
tide in practical municipalization is turned. Where advocates 
once looked for a constant expansion, this has been arrested by 
disillusion. Government ownership of undertakings of electricity 
and light railways covering supra-municipal areas may be called 
for, bat there the practical political leaders show a disposition to 
halt. With regard to municipal lodgings, steamboats and miscel- 
laneous supplies, there has been reaction. Platform demands may 
be more numerous than ever with extremely radical theorists who 
have the ear of the clamorous among the hungry masses, but the 
recent elections have gone against the radical sentiment, and ap- 
propriations from councils and Parliament are commonly expected 
to cease or follow slowly. 

To put the foregoing points broadly, these are the general 
labor results of municipalization in Great Britain : 

(1) The wage level among municipal mechanics and other 
skilled men varies little if any from the trade union scale, as paid 
in the private undertakings. (2) For common municipal labor 
the wages and workday are better than for the average of private 
labor, the difference being due to several causes, among them the 
individual superiority of the picked municipal men and the influ- 
ence of collectivism, humanitarianism and socialist politics. (3) 
Industries once marked out by British municipalizers as areas for 
municipal employment are now given up by their practical leaders. 

In America, the municipalized enterprises visited by our labor 
investigators have been rich mines for significant facts relating 
to politics rather than to labor. These facts are not usually among 
those heretofore emphasized by the American advocates of munic- 
ipal ownership. The testimony as to political rottenness, root and 



(i4 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

branch, in Syracuse, Alleglien}^ and Wheeling is conclusive. The 
municipal plants examined in these cities, it is to be remembered^ 
Vv-ere selected as models b}^ representative municipalizers of the 
Commission. Nor is the politico-labor situation in Detroit, Cleve- 
land, Chicago or Eichmond at all settled as well as it might be. 
Just which of the secretaries and superintendents at Detroit in 
the thirteen years have been purely political appointments, just 
how many of the trustees have been put on the commission to 
serye special interests rather than the community, just to what de- 
gree organized labor has employed coercion with the mayor, and 
just how much of an electrician the superintendent of electricity 
ought to be — fierce argument over such points, as well as the actual 
cost per light, have kept Detroit in the heat of debate ever since 
the public electricity station was established. In Cleveland, the 
present maj^or in the beginning increased his reform forces in the 
public water department so as to strengthen his vote in the pri- 
maries — an act possible at all times also under the next and suc- 
ceeding administrations, which may be bad where the present is 
good. The degree of purity attained by the present administration 
is attributable to the officials and the public sentiment aroused, and 
not to municipalization. In Chicago, where civil service is iron- 
clad, the appointment by the mayor of department heads and even 
of the Civil Service Commission itself, has more than once proved 
a vulnerable point in the civic armor, with sad results. In Detroit, 
Cleveland or Chicago the stability of the municipally operated 
enterprises rests largely on the mayor, who, however personally 
estimable and statesmanlike, necessarily becomes as a candidate a 
relatively good or bad politician, representing for a brief term a 
policy that may change with his successor. It is plain that in this 
political situation the resultant labor problem is most difficult. 
An employee can only hold office in uncertainty, with its consequent 
evils. He knows not what a coming term will bring. This form 
of disquiet is not usual in private employment. That it exists 
in Great Britain among municipal works managers is a certainty. 
The foremost operating official in one of the largest private tram- 
ways said: "I would not be a manager for a corporation" (munic- 
ipality). A civil engineer told one of our committeemen : "Many 
managers for corporations seek to get away by finding company 
positions." 

As to Eichmond, its exclusion of black men suggests a burn- 
ing race question indeed, North and South, were municipalization 
generally adopted and Eichmond's example in that respect fol- 
lowed. That feature vitiates any inferences as to the labor prob- 
lem that otherwise might be made with the Eichmond gas works 
as a basis. To institute a comparison with Atlanta and reach con- 
clusions relating to wages in municipal vs. private plants, while 
ignoring the real and obvious factor in the retort-house wage dif- 
ferences — the race question — would be simply to fail to record all 
the truth. 



THE LABOR REPORT. 65 

Many mimicipalizers, as did the Populists^ vigorously uphold 
the theory that the root oi' the evils connected with municipal ad- 
ministration in America is found in the money power seeking fran- 
chises. While anti-municipal reformers are endeavoring to strip 
this power of any sinister influence it possesses by refining the 
provisions for the regulation of franchise grants to the point that 
will leave no more than rightful returns for investments, the munic- 
ipalizers assert that this harmful power is the main prop of the po- 
litical machine and that the voters can only protect the munici- 
pality against it and reduce the machine to a skeleton throug]i 
municipal ownership. The point is not to be enlarged on here that 
thereby they might but arect in the end a hundredfold more harm- 
ful machinery ; or that they have set out with an exaggerated notion 
of the present-day necessity of corporations to struggle for further 
franchise grants, and also an inadequate appreciation of certain 
elements of the machine, such as the purchasable vote, and of 
its varied sources of revenue, such as the numerous Federal, State 
and local offices, elective or appointive, usually for short terms; 
the host of public contractors; the "outs" as well as the "ins" 
among the politicians; the liquor interest, with a politician dealer 
in every election district; the police; the real estate and other 
speculators and even ordinary business men who receive bosses^ 
notices to help in campaigns. Eather, the point necessary first to 
decide is whether the bosses blackmail the capitalist investors, as 
they do all others they can reach, or whether the capitalists main- 
tain franchise-getting bosses as their tools. The municipalizers 
who believe that the capitalists are the instigators in the game 
naturally are alive to find facts to confirm their suspicions — yet 
every one knows that Buch facts are most difficult to establish. 
Political campaigns abound in rumors, with what bases all may 
guess and few know. A little time spent by an investigator in any 
community in America may yield him whispers derogatory to al- 
most every man of the locality ever in politics. To sift this back- 
stairs and darkroom talk down to substantial truth is a task sel- 
dom carried out. The characterless politician who declares that he 
himself helped to extort bribery money from corporations or han- 
dled enforced contributions is a knave not to be believed. One 
can build any theory on such evidence as his gossip. Notes taken 
of even the confidential revelations of good men with strong no- 
litical bias may lead to conclusions regarding certain city coun- 
cils or certain evil social tendencies which remain sound until flatly 
contradicted by men equally virtuous and equally positive. The 
hunt is every man's. In America the hunt is livelier and the game 
more plentiful than in Britain. 

So numerous and so signal are other differences, political and 
economic, between labor conditions in Great Britain and America, 
that to summarize them here would prove a formidable task. They 
are outlined in Professor Goodnow's "British Municipality," and 
in the labor investigators' "Suffrage," "Working Class Conditions," 
and "Labor and Politics." One w4o has read these chapters can 



66 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

never again freely employ British municipal developments in own- 
ership and operation, whatever their effects, as precedents easily lo 
be imitated in America. The British municipalization movement 
is shown as originating in social conditions — even to the working- 
class death rate — ^utterly lemoved from conditions in this country. 
Possibilities for the masses were not the same, the voting power 
differs, the steps to be taken here could not be similar to those 
taken there^, and the status now arrived at and the results in view 
in Britain differ, to a degree no one can with any certainty esti- 
mate, from what is probable in America. 

Any advantage in wages or hours to be figured out for the 
municipal enterprises investigated in America over the private 
ones compared with them look much like stale illustrations of the 
soft berths to be found in public employment. To what extent 
the jobs are political for the employees, singly or collectively, or 
a bid for the labor vote is constantly a question. On this point 
my colleague aptly says : "In the municipal undertakings a larger 
proportion of the positions are likely to be semi-political." In 
Chicago one of the union secretaries, in speaking of the city officials 
granting the union scale, avowed : "'^Ye tell them, 'These are our 
rates'; they're politicians, and they know what to do." AMien the 
secretary of the Wheeling gas trustees was asked: "WTio fixes the 
w^ages and conditions at the works ?'^ his reply was: "The men!" 
He described their strikes as not trade union but political, con- 
nived at by council members and other city officials. In Syracuse 
the two-dollar rate to laborers goes notoriously to political work- 
ers. The disclosures of political rule at Syracuse, Allegheny and 
"\Anieeling would make it a mockery of scientific observation to 
ascribe the high wages for laborers in those municipal undertak- 
ings to the "virtues" of municipal o^^-nership. A summary of 
minimum wage comparisons between private and municipal enter- 
prises must call for m^any modifications. First, it is to be remem- 
bered that the "minimum" of private wages is not the standard 
of private wages in a community, but the lowest point for the poor- 
est paid class in particular enterprises. A comparison of the vari- 
ous private and municipal classifications up to the highest is not 
possible, inasmuch as the forces of the large companies are sub- 
divided in finer gradations than the comparatively small forces of 
the municipalities. Practical men will derive their impressions on 
this point from our wage tables. A correct view, then, takes in 
these points: Syracuse, the wages situation politically debauched; 
WTieeling, the same; Allegheny, the same, to an extent that when 
a difference of 50 to 100 per cent, in favor of municipalization 
is soberly computed by one man it makes another laugh. Detroit, 
private and municipal plants but a shade difference. Cleveland, 
nine hours municipal as against ten in the general labor market, 
wages the same. Indianapolis, no municipal undertakings, the 
rate quoted being for the public departments, for which much of 
the work is irregular ; the water company pays nearly all its labor- 
ers $1.75. Chicago, the words "minimum wages" here obtain so 



THE LABOR REPORT. 67 

great a significance that, if the tabular statements were not at 
hand as a corrective, a generally erroneous impression of the aver- 
age wages paid by the companies investigated might be derived. 
Of 252 laborers, less than one-fourth are paid as low as $1.'<5 
per day, and these could noi. pass the city's civil service examination. 
Ten hours is the exception with the companies' employees. The 
Chicago firemen in the fire department do not receive union rates. 
New Haven, no municipal undertaking; hours, eight, public de- 
partments, as against nine water works. Eichmond-Atlanta, where 
white as against black labor is employed, economic comparison 
gives way to race comparison. Philadelphia, United Gas Improve- 
ment Company, better wages and hours than any city department, 
and a reduction from twelve-hour shifts under municipal operation 
to eight under the company with higher wages. Further points 
to be kept in view: With the companies mentioned, many times 
more hands are employed than with the municipalities ; good men 
have been more certain of retaining their places; the employees 
pay no political assessments and are otherwise politically free ; they 
v/ork under better conditions as to comfort and future prospects. 

Up to this stage of our survey, the showing of exceptional 
benefits to the wage workers employed by British or American 
municipalities, where any whatever have appeared, has been at- 
tended v.'ith a showing of positive detriment in so many respects 
as to give a picture in striking contrast with that usually heretofore 
exhibited to the world by municipalizers. 

Passing from the pure wage and workday phase of our study, 
we have to record certain fundamental differences between public 
and private employment always observable to a greater or less 
extent, and with regard to which the labor report offers testimon}^, 
direct or indirect. These differences exist from the point of view 
of the employer, the employee and society. Being differences of 
kind, they do not depend on the attitude of passing administrations 
or individual managers. 

The relations between the private employer and his employee 
are simple. If the employer pays the wages and the employee 
turns out the work agreed upon, the parties are quits as to busi- 
ness. If the two supplement business with kindly sentiments, the 
way is clear to promote the happiness of both, in. word and deed. 
This principle runs good in the largest service, as to the head or his 
representatives face to face with the force. The trade union in 
its simple form does not aim to change this relation. It would 
establish minimum wages and hours and a standard of working 
conditions, but leave the employer free in hiring and discharging, 
under the trade agreement provisions, and the employee also free 
aside from his union ties. But public employment, not to speak 
of its rigidity of forms and m.ethods, its faults of delay and over- 
sight, gives rise, partly through politics but especially through its 
essentials of authority and restraint, to a maze of complications. 
Some of these, and their hurtfulness, as illustrated by facts in th? 
labor report, call for mention. 



68 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

Public employees, frequently against their will, under duress 
from officials who may injure them, promote by election contribu- 
tions the fortunes of certain men and parties, though at heart they 
may be opposed to both. With these employees, violation of 
manly principle and dishonor to the State are secondary to 
holding their places. In Detroit, the "yellow assessment book" is 
passed around in all the city departments except that of electricity, 
in which, however, only a few years ago it was also circulated. In 
Wheeling, the smallest officeholder who fails to pay his political 
assessment is speedily dislodged. In Syracuse, where "even the 
scrubwomen" are assessed by the party in power, it was said that 
a proceeding not unheard of was a subscription by an official to 
both parties. In Allegheny, the one body of workmen who, through 
their union, refused to contribute to campaign funds, were pun- 
ished by an increase of work at no higher pay. In London, it was 
but an enforced party contribution when at one of his meetings 
the opponents of Lord Avebury packed the galler}^ with municipal 
employees "to shout so as not a word could be heard." The con- 
ditions for coercion may exist even where it is not exerted for the 
time being. In Chicago and Cleveland the heads of departments, 
always active supporters of their respective mayor's political policy, 
must when ordered, to the extent possible, introduce politics or va- 
cate office. In Detroit, a man whose appointment was of "a dis- 
tinctly political character," was for years "the dominating figure" 
in the Public Lighting Commission, and that may be the case again. 
Neither the acts nor the conditions just described are characteristic 
of private employment. And they are clearly not of a kind out of 
which develops the independent citizenship upon which free insti- 
tutions are to rest. 

The executive — mayor, councilman or department head — not 
only in appointing but in promoting or dismissing employees is 
exposed to partisan, personal, social or other pressure. Of the 
British cities visited, partisanship in this respect was least dis- 
guised in London, but in several others "lines to councillors," by ob- 
taining for applicants the printed forms, could insure them the first 
necessary step toward a hearing. In Glasgow, Sheffield and Leicester 
this practice interfered with the fair play due all citizens seeking 
work. A few years ago foisting a body of incompetents on a city's 
payroll was more common in Great Britain than at present; the 
wave of municipal reform and the revolt of the wage workers served 
for a time to suppress this custom ; but whether the betterment is to 
be permanent or the same abuses are not creeping in under new 
forms are fears now given common expression. In machine ruled 
American cities the spoils system gives to the party in power the 
right to fill all the offices; even in the better governed cities a 
change of administration brings good reason for uneasiness to all 
employees not fully protected by law. Municipal employment as 
a consequence can rarely attract the same class of upright, self- 
respecting, capable wage workers as private employment. Here 
is a fact of grave import in its social significance, and it is of a 



THE LABOR REPORT. 69 

scope as wide as the labor market. It reveals one valid reason why 
the people the least governed are the best governed. 

Municipal employees directly, and the employed class in gen- 
eral only less immediately, may undermine the integrity of the 
employing city official. The Municipal Employees' Association of 
Great Britain, whose members "do not vote" for candidates that 
decline to comply with their demands, is the prototype of combina- 
tions sure to be formed with more or less definiteness wherever the 
ballot may be used as a bludgeon. Exposed to this menace, a 
municipal councillor or manager must decide in all his acts with 
reference not only to his duty but to his fate on election day. Just 
as he must not defy his party, local or national, and must be 
aware of injuring other powerful voting elements, he must not of- 
fend this or that class of labor. As my colleague truly says: 
"Municipal employees sooner or later cast their votes for candidates 
who promise or who have secured a betterment of their condition, 
regardless of its effect on the enterprise as a whole" — or, it may 
be added, on the community as a whole. In the minds of most 
citizens this admission is sufficient to blast any scheme that brings 
with it a solid band of voters bent not on the common good but 
their own selfish ends. To gain these they would betray any other 
cause. 

In America, threatening to ruin a party or a candidate in the 
name of labor seeking justice has long been a move of both true 
and false labor leaders. The latter have played the game ad nau- 
seam in every community, to the disgust and mortification of hon- 
est labor men, yet they continue to catch dupes. To dodge the 
punitive vote of some class, or color, or creed, or nationality that 
gives strength to a pack of arrant demagogues, the officeholder 
plays to the galleries, the public teacher with ambitions becomes 
dumb, and the political organ suppresses news or modifies opin- 
ions. The professional labor politician, finding himself possessed 
of manipulative power, is as liable to attempt to pervert the vote 
of his union as he would that of any other organization giving him 
support. Even in unions in which there is no perversion an undue 
emphasis is at times placed upon the union ballot, through whose 
strength an unfair profit may be taken from a municipality. On 
October 10 last the business agent of the building trades unions 
appeared before a Chicago council committee and said that unless 
the city agreed to pay double wages for overtime to its employees 
in the organizations he represented they would refuse to work 
beyond the regular eight hours, no matter what the emergency. 
The committee voted to recommend to the council the ordinance 
providing for double pay. The opposition daily press in conse- 
quence had its jeers for the administration, not so much that it 
was fighting the wage workers as that it recognized the politicians' 
need of backbone. In recent years in Great Britain the legitimate 
objects of the old line labor unions have been frequently cast into 
the shade in view of the possible fruits of election day. Eegardless 
of the hurtful effect on private employment, the leaders of common 



70 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

labor have made all that Ciin be squeezed through platform demand? 
from the City Hall the general proposed standard of wages. Union- 
ists opposed to this policy are "obstacles to the welfare of labor." 
The stronger sentiment for the hour in British labor circles has 
been voiced in : "Vote with us or you are not a union man" ; "Pay 
an assessment for our labor candidates, or take the consequences." 
When this is the case the union member who talks and votes as he 
thinks, if in the minority, takes risks. And therein so far is de- 
struction to independent democracy. Such a situation in any union 
of Americans would presage its collapse. 

The wage worker who reads the labor report cannot but per- 
ceive that municipalization in various ways carries perils to the 
trade union. In the first place, the field for the labor vote manip- 
ulator enlarges with municipal employment. But many unionists 
refuse to be moved about like pawns, and the lukewarm union mem- 
ber declining either to support or to fight the growing strength of 
pernicious labor politicians has one more reason to drop out of tho 
union should occasion arise. Again, individual unionists at work for 
municipalities learn to look to politics for help ; whole unions do so, 
as in the case of the British electrical workers, and in so far they are 
out of the real union movement. They are engrafted political clubs, 
not trade unions. They carry perversion into the ranks of genuine 
unionism. Such unions, as my colleague says of the British Munici- 
pal Employees' Association, "weaken other unions while building on 
their support." A British trade union secretary, speaking of unions 
of city employees, said: "It is not difficult to organize them to 
get an increase ; the trouble is to hold them afterward." Unionism 
and office holding, even of the pettiest grade, do not fuse. Another 
source of undermining the union movement lies in such municipal 
benefit and pension schemes as have forestalled the unionization 
of both the Glasgow and Liverpool tramway forces. Inevitably, 
purely trade union organization will be discouraged with the prog- 
ress of political trade union organization. The national labor 
movement in Great Britain was perhaps necessarily changed in 
character for a time through the Taff-Vale decision; a political 
demonstration was unavoidable; but the ensuing political events, 
despite voices of warning, carried the unions to a point difficult 
to distinguish from Socialism. And similarly, the steps beyond a 
union campaign for municipalization in this country, and a stage 
of municipalization itself, should this come, cannot be foreseen by 
American unionists. There might indeed come a glimpse of the 
wonders of collectivism, but erected on the ruins of unionism. 

It may be urged that unions in America have been committed 
to the support of municipalization, but it is far from being so in 
the sense that many of the unions have been in Great Britain. 
It is true that conventions of the American Federation of Labor, 
while almost unanimously voting down the socialistic element, have 
passed resolutions approving of municipal ownership and operation 
of monopolies. It is also true that ten years ago conventions of 
the Federation indorsed free silver, and it is equally true that the 



THE LABOR REPORT. 71 

great industrial centres, strongly unionized, heaped up large ma- 
jorities against the free silver candidate for the Presidency, and 
that the issue is now forgotten. Of like significance it was when 
the delegates to an annual convention of the International Typo- 
graphical Union voted, 100 to 6, against the referendum in the 
organization; hut the members reversed the delegates by 6 to 1. 
The broad underlying fact in these reversions of conventions by 
the membership is that, while American unionists permit their con- 
vention delegates an indefinite liberty in passing resolutions, espe- 
cially if these refer to the generally recognized evils of monopoly, 
when the question of a practical remedy is voted on at the polls 
each man acts on his own judgment. The American unions, un- 
like those of Great Britain, do not support candidates and public 
officeholders out of their union treasuries. While central labor 
unions may indorse municipal ownership in the abstract, our in- 
vestigators found no instance of an American trade union taking 
an active part in the elections for municipal officers. In Xew York 
last year eleven municipal ownership aldermen were elected, but 
not as trade unionists. 

Great Britain's present municipal political conditions have 
brought about a discussion of the disfranchisement of municipal 
employees. Sir John Ure Primrose, recent Lord Provost of Glasgow, 
who presided at one of the meetings attended by our committee, said 
on a previous occasion : "We have reached a point where we begin to 
see a danger ahead, and this one which, from what I know of your 
peculiar political system, is likely to be more threatening to you 
than to us. This arises out of the building up of a great army of 
municipal employees." Mr. E. 0. Smith, town clerk of Birming- 
ham since 1881, testified before a Parliamentary committee: "I 
should like to see all corporate employees disfranchised." Sir 
Thomas Hughes, alderman since 1878, except during his two terms 
as mayor, said to the same committee : "I have known an instance 
where combination was the occasion of a very good man being 
thrown out of his position as a councillor simply because they 
thought he did not favor" (the municipal employees). "I should 
gladly welcome" (disfranchisement). Manager Dalr^^mple of the 
Glasgow tramways, through conscientious scruples, does not vote. 
He favors disfranchising public servants, and does not permit tram- 
way employees to take part in municipal politics beyond voting. 
Lord Stanley, when postmaster general, tried to have Parliament 
pass a bill disfranchising postmen. He failed of re-election, and 
the organized postmen speak of having finished his career, unaware 
that in this boast they apprize the lay citizen of the postmen's 
adhesion to a bureaucracy apart from the community, with inter- 
ests of its own. The British w^ay out of the dilemma of an army 
of public servants become a public menace may be disfranchise- 
ment; a like dilemma, and the menace of a similar fate to free 
wage workers, are yet avoidable in x\merica. 

One showing of our labor investigations is a tendency of 
municipal employees in either country to refuse to enter unions 



72 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

when nothing is to be gained at once for themselves, or having 
organized and taken a profit to qnit singty or in a body. This 
comes from the fact that while the nnion idea is to master the labor 
market of an occupation and then by strike or negotiation to mark 
up labor prices, a different idea in time predominantly animates 
the mAmicipal employee. The minds of his emploj^ers, '^the higher 
office-holders, being affected by the variety of considerations above 
noted that do not enter the mind of a private employer, it is for 
the municipal employee to study those considerations' and when 
they involve political destinies to turn them to his own account. 
The strike, with the necessary maintenance of trade union machin- 
ery, is not so facile and inexpensive as political influence and 
pressure, with no regular weekly or monthly dues to support the 
combination exerting them. And why when the political method 
is operative and promising should the public employee also help 
carry the union? The gas workers of AYheeling "immediately 
dropped out of the union" on receiving even less advantages than 
those the local Trade Assembly was struggling to obtain for them. 
In this they unknowingly imitated the gas workers of the municipal 
plant at Eotherham, adjoining Sheffield, who disbanded on obtain- 
ing through the laborers' national union officials an advance to an 
equal footing with the Sheffield Gas Company's men. On this action 
a Sheffield labor councillor commented: "They can now neither 
help themselves nor any one else." The Leicester municipal gas 
workers, when pleaded with by Secretary Will Thorne to pay dues 
to his union, thus to help their brothers elsewhere, coldly held aloof, 
gave not a penny, and voted not to organize. Municipal employees 
are surely in the union movement when they want help, but they 
may be out of it when called on for help. The promoters of a new 
union cannot discriminate among the qualified applicants for mem- 
bership nor shape too definitely the union's own policies. It is not 
the organizer's fault if employing municipal officials are more easily 
persuaded to lend a hand than private employers, or if municipal 
employees on occasions come into the union on a little judicious 
persuasion with more alacrity than hands who have got along with 
their employers well for years. And if a stage is early reached at 
which the union's scale and requirements, as enforced upon the 
municipality, are so far above the market rates for some grades of 
-skill, and so crude and arbitrary as not to be adaptable to the vari- 
ous special developments of the industry, there will be found out- 
side the organization many men in private employment who by 
proper management ought to be within. This is i3y some electrical 
workers in Chicago described as the union situation there. It 
would perhaps be to the political interest of the Chicago Edison 
Company to have a unionized force, but the union's scale is not 
adapted to the company's forty-odd subdivisions of employees. To 
some extent the same line of reasoning is applicable to other oc- 
cupations. If the thought is correct, the general trade union move- 
ment suffers from whatever is spurious in the municipal employees' 
unions. The selfishness of the municipal employees in driving the 



THE LABOR REPORT. 73 

best bargain for themselves, regardless of the possibilities of a 
general organization with modified demands, is a fatal flaw in 
the new unionism. To point to a so-called union force working 
for a municipality and a non-union force in the same occupation 
working for private employers is not a conclusive argument for 
municipalization to the experienced union man. Every non-union 
private force is in possible union territory, and once gained the 
force will most likely be permanently and actually union. And for 
the promotion of a wholesome, honest and solid unionism a certain 
opposition by private employers is necessary. It teaches the em- 
ployer obligation, the non-unionist the benefits of organization in 
any form, and the unionist the Just and practicable limitations of 
his claims. With an open opposition from private employers, such 
as exists to-day in the mining industry governed by the trade 
agreement, the unionists know where they are. With the half- 
union and half-political patchwork compromise existing between 
union business agents and municipal officials, the union spokesmen 
are in a false position, the city officials are usually under suspi- 
<iion as time-servers, the unions immediately concerned are not in 
every respect genuine, and the union movement is handicapped. 

To some trade union leaders the policy of working up wages 
by first establishing a high municipal wage rate and then promot- 
ing strikes in private employment for the same standard is ad- 
vanced as one easily worked. It has its limitations, and its steps 
in practice may be forestalled. Very few classes of wage workers 
-are employed by the city government. It is not worth while for 
fifty occupations to take up the political method for the possible 
benefit of perhaps five. And the masses of the men concerned in 
private employ will not always permit themselves to be used, as 
the policy suggests, to run up high wages for a small minority 
while awaiting a problematical future move on their own behalf. 
The contracts with individual workmen made by British munici- 
palities and companies defeat the policy wholly in so far as gas 
and water employees are concerned. 

"Open shop" is the inevitable character of municipal, as all 
other government, employment. Appointments must be possible 
to all citizens. Union rules and orders must give way in the shop 
to the law and official decisions. The Miller case of the government 
printing office at Washington set at rest reasonable doubt on these 
points, one result recently being the refusal of seventy members 
ot the typographical union in that office to pay the union eight-hour 
assessment. In the municipal enterprises investigated at Eichmond, 
South N'orwalk, Syracuse, Allegheny, Wheeling, Detroit, Cleve- 
land and Chicago the laborers are not organized, while in the 
mechanical trades both union and non-union men without discrim- 
ination hold positions. Through the activity of business agents 
union men may at some municipal plants obtain a larger proportion 
of situations than non-union, but rarely can the agent compel the 
municipal employee, if firmly unwilling, to pay his union dues. By 
the agitation of central labor unions, groups of municipal employees 



74 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

may get be-tter terms from a city and then be free to remain apart 
from the labor movement. In Great Britain, when the mechanics 
of a city engage in a strike against a lowering of wages, the union 
liiimicipal employees remain at work, but if the strike is lost their 
wages are reduced with those of the strikers. In the little South 
Norwalk, Connecticut, electrical works the non-union hands have 
been exempted from membership in the Bridgeport union, a course 
possibly helpful to municipal ownership but if pursued consistently 
not to trade unionism. These facts, illustrating endless artificial 
obstacles to unionism in public employ, hardly describe a possible 
prospect under municipalization for building up in America a 
united body of wage workers animated with one set of hopes,, 
rules and aims. In fact, the enemies of trade unionism might di- 
vide and conquer it through municipal ownership, were the cost 
not socially prohibitive. 

Municipalities are impersonal employers. They operate 
through mechanisms. Petitions from individual emploj^ees, for 
example, may meet refusal by a reference of the signers to the 
regulations; those from a body, if recognized at all, must go by 
way of red tape finally to the power making appropriations. The 
higher municipal officials can arrange for such matters as the com- 
fort and convenience of employees only as themselves invested with 
funds and authority, which is rarely the case, or they may affect 
to sympathize with the members of a force while really plotting 
against their interests. But the private employer or his represent- 
ative can be reached directly by the employed and a decision ar- 
rived at quickly. In this case the two parties see each other in 
the open. In kindness or unkindness man faces man. Eesults of 
these two forms of relationship between the employer and the 
employed, municipal and company, as recorded in the labor report, 
and indeed as observed by our committeemen generally, do not 
confirm the assertions, so assiduously given circulation by munici- 
palizers, that municipalization has tended to abolish workplace 
hardships and introduce new comforts in the workingman's Hie. 
Usually attempts to "live up to the brag" in Great Britain have 
been flat failures. At the main Glasgow works, of the day shift 
of 500 men, but a dozen in the course of the week make use of the 
shower baths, only a corporal's guard go to the mess room, few 
enter the reading hall — the structure for these purposes, which 
stands too far away from the works proper to permit of immediate 
use, not being provided with necessary conveniences — toweling,, 
means for drying clothes, methods for the care of library matter. 
At Leicester, but 72 of the 600 employees care enough for the club 
and recreation hall to pay 2d. a week to enjoy its privileges. The 
two great gas stations of Birmingham — Saltley and Xechells — 
have heretofore lacked the common bathing facilities always looked 
for at gas works. x\s a rule, however, British workmen have not 
been taught to expect the same consideration as American. The ap- 
pearance of new conveniences in recent years at some of the Brit- 
ish municipal works has furnislied to enthusiastic Fabian writers 



THE LABOR REPORT. 75^ 

the grounds for many ])raises and ardent liopes for the coming 
millennial era through their social revolution, but the innovations 
were merely what has been customary in many American establish- 
ments. The welfare works of Great Britain's municipal undertak- 
ings, while a shade better than the private, seem to have not been 
worth any especial notice from our own investigators. When a 
good word is said for Liverpool's coffee and cake and billiard 
rooms at one of the car depots, and the tidiness of two or three 
retiring places at other plants, the subject is quite exhausted. In 
this country the company plants visited have usually far better 
methods both for assuaging hardship and encouraging men in self^ 
respect and worthy ambition than the municipal. In Chicago, the 
Edison Company's close personal relationship with its employees 
stands in sharp contrast with that municipality's neglect of even 
decent accommodations for its electrical workers. Mean appoint- 
ments and dirt are characteristic of Chicago's municipal electric 
stations. The Edison Company's system of instruction and club- 
room features has no counterpart in the city's electrical depart- 
ment, while the company's gradation of employees and promotion 
on merit form a practical civil service that needs no commission 
with theories and is operative every day in the year. 

Something is revealed in the difference in appearance of the 
men seen about public and private offices and workrooms. "This^ 
office," said the chief gas inspector in the Richmond City Hail,. 
^^used to be political headquarters. The fellows stood about, or 
sat on the desks and tables, and had the telephone going all the 
time. I put up Valk oack^ notices, said I meant everybody, and 
succeeded in a partial reformation." This picture is familiar to 
every American citizen who has had business at the ciiy hall or 
court-house. The scramblers for petty offices or short-term jobs 
between election times hang about to discuss the moves on the 
political chessboards. Their manners are not the manners of men 
in private business places. The public office or workroom itself 
is usuall}^ wanting in the cleanliness, furniture and facilities ob- 
servable in the private. A key here in either case to causes that 
operate upon efficiency at every stage. 

Xot one of the British or American municipal plants of any 
kind presented a systematized combination of features in the form 
of benefits, education, grading, welfare work, care for the aged, 
etc., that gave the slightest foundation for the claim of municipal- 
ization advocates that with public ownership arise striking evi- 
dences of closer sympathetic relations between employer and em- 
ployed. On the contrary, in reciting the undeniable facts as to the 
watchfulness of American companies over the health, comfort, 
technical education and advancement in business of their employees, 
one's words may be construed as praise where the intent is no more 
than exact report. The reader is invited to consult our labor 
statements on these points and form his own judgment. The Chi- 
cago Edison Company and the Philadelphia United Gas Improve- 
ment Company, each far more extensive than the largest municipal 



76 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

gas or electric works visited abroad, exhibit both ripened business 
judgment and strong sentiments of fellowship in numerous forms 
of care for their employees, whether at work or at play. It is 
but one's plain duty to call attention also to the exemplary over- 
sight of the Indianapolis Water Company in regard to the material 
conditions of its force, lo the New Haven Company's record for 
retaining its employees, and to the Atlanta Company's interesting 
methods of rewards beyond wages. Nor, since our task is a com- 
parison of methods, is it invidious to direct attention to the table 
of terms of service in the Glasgow municipal tramways, giving 
color as it does to the assertions of a Glasgow correspondent of 
the London ^^Clarion" (Socialist), who wrote, January 19, 1906, 
that : "Motor men and conductors to be employed on the tramways 
must produce a five years^ reference, but on leaving, unless going 
abroad, no character is given; that the conductors have to pay 
the full face value for lost tickets; that the men are supposed to 
report each other for neglect of duty; that men have been sus- 
pended for not wearing the regulation uniform, for punching a 
ticket in the wrong place, and for numberless trifles which no pri- 
vate employer would think of even checking a man for." This 
correspondent also called attention to the large number who leave 
every year, owing to the many petty grievances and irregularity 
of the hours with which they have to put up. Our investigators' 
table shows that 1,085 of the 2,433 have less than three j^ears' 
standing as employees. 

The Liverpool municipal tramways service employs no man 
under the age of thirty years. Glasgow takes on no elderly men 
as lamplighters, watchmen, etc. Few, if any, of the British under- 
takings investigated instruct beginners at laboring work. Such 
facts throw on the municipal "minimum wage" a light different 
from that in which it stands when the shillings that may be gained 
under it have isolated mention. The British municipality selects 
a workman after proof of his character and mental and physical 
fltness, it hires no aging raan, usually obliges the young learner to 
obtain his knowledge and certificate from a private employer, 
strictly holds the employee up to discipline, and discharges him 
by rule and regulation. As little compunction is to be expected 
as when the city of Glasgow seizes the last stick of furniture of the 
poor man to satisfy a claim for gas, water or electricity. Herein 
are many indications that municipal wage rates, including pension 
schemes, are to a considerable extent but the effect of trade union 
and labor vote pressure and not of the brotherly feeling of the 
higher office holders. On the whole, a municipality, British or 
American, pays the wage the law prescribes and there it stops. 
Numerous obstacles inherent in public employment stand in the 
way of having it do more. 

The American employee properly infused with our national 
spirit seeks a career in which he, alike with his fellows, may hope 
to reap due rewards and suffer just penalties, while retaining in 
every respect his liberties as a freeman. But the obstacles to this 



THE LABOR REPORT. 77 

ideal condition are endless in public employ. As we have seen, 
it usually offers to the aspirant the vicious spoils system^ or in a 
few cases a schoolboy civil service examination, partly absurd and 
on occasion humiliating, with the possibility, as a climax of injury, 
of disfranchisement. The directing administrators of a municipality 
— mayor, councilmen, department heads — officially, by nature or 
their terms of service, can promise the employee but short memories, 
vacillating judgments and varying policies. These deficiencies can- 
not engender the confidence in his future that puts vim into a man^s 
work. Moreover, in official life but little play is off'ered for the 
heart. The usual public expression of indebtedness beyond wages 
— pensions — is a standing testimony to enormous abuse. In the 
public service, opportunity to advance even when legally prear- 
ranged through examinations systematized and robbed of attraction 
to versatile mentality and high character, is exposed to influence 
and political plotting. A public employee without backing may 
never be given occasion to prove his peculiar abilities; even bare 
legal recognition of his proper claims may tardily be conceded. 
The average public employee displays a sufficiently high order of 
merit to hold his place if he merely follows the code of rules me- 
chanically. To a certain limit he may be slovenly, indolent, ill- 
natured, unhelpful, selfish, unobliging to the public, and yet incur 
no punishment. Private employment in general does not develop 
this character; it rewards ideas, alertness, civility, cleanliness, 
energy. A force of public emplo3^ees with rights under the regula- 
tions invariably become a band of lay lawyers who know the loop- 
holes of the law favorable to themselves. "Old soldiers," they are 
capable of violating the spirit while paying it outward deference. 
Every public employee daily faces the riddle as to where his obli- 
gation as the government's man ends and his freedom as a citizen 
begins; post office employees may not combine and agitate while 
off duty with a view to an increase in their salaries. N^ot to give 
the proposition to disfranchise any weight, the prohibition of per- 
nicious political activity is at once a notice to public employees 
that they stand in a category apart from citizens in general, a rec- 
ognition by the community that they live too near power to be 
trusted, and a warning that the menace that they constitute ought 
not to be increased. A desirable humanitarianism in public ser- 
vice, such as a maximum annual sick leave, may through perversion 
become simply an emolument of office ; a necessary exercise of pref- 
erence by superiors, a means of favoritism ; a system of promotions 
on examination, a device to reward spasmodic cramming and de- 
feat sterling every-day capability. The disparities of pay and treat- 
ment and length of workday so frequently observed among various 
classes of public employees illustrate the difficulties of adjusting 
details through statutes. To organized labor the problem pre- 
sented by municipal employment through possible falling away of 
members, misrepresentation by vote hucksters, and the gradual 
transition from unionism to politics, is rendered the more compli- 
cated by the fact that no private blacklist ever instituted has been 



78 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

SO sweeping as that operative through civil service or similar inqui- 
sition against a discharged public employee. Once out for cause, 
to re-enter the public service is a heart-breaking task. 

If these observations are true they are proofs that private 
employment is free from manifold drawbacks that in the public 
service lower efficiency, form automatons, and discourage a proper 
and manly self-assertion. To a large extent the various objec- 
tions noted in this review are stated or suggested in our labor re- 
port; and American wage workers already give them wide recog- 
nition in practice. Among the more independent there is a large 
class who consider that precisely as the field of public employment 
is enlarged — with its age limits, its uncertainties, its unsettled and 
always doubtful civil service, its asylums for barnacles, its artificial 
relationships, its unrequited exactions, its inducements to hypoc- 
risy and filchings — the field in which they may find honest work, 
or any work, is diminished. Xo man can entertain that view of 
the extension of private employment, in its variety. There, the 
more work the more chance for all. 

But when all is said on the vexed question of public versus 
private employment, only a single phase of the workingman's re- 
lation to municipalizing has been seen. Not by an enormous per- 
centage is the working class citizenship represented by municipal 
employees, and not by a considerable percentage even by the trade 
unionists. A majority of the latter might for a time decide to 
support municipal ownership and operation and yet come far from 
truly representing the whole of the workers. This can only be done 
by the total masses of society who through work of all grades are 
in the broader sense producers. These have at stake infinitely the 
greatest interests — political, economic, social. Earely is this truth 
accorded its full weight. The eye-glass of political reformers — 
and men of all parties so consider themselves — is commonly di- 
rected alternately on the public employee to ascertain if he ha^ 
been made better off by municipal experiments on trial, and on 
the organized mass of wage workers whose votes on an issue may 
be decisive. AYliile all men feel that the general good is what is 
meant to be subserved, heated argument over lesser phases is thus 
the partisan habit. When one reflects on the comprehensive sig- 
nificance of the term "the wage earner" and is told that "the ten- 
dency of municipal o^^iiership is to benefit the wage earner more 
in the United States than in Great Britain" he is struck both with 
the absurdity of attributing stiff' municipal wages to altruistic 
origins and with the pitiful inadequacy of the descriptive term 
employed, unless there lurks in it the promise of a paradise v/hen 
the army of public employees shall be increased without limit. 

Another highly important i:>oint is often lost to view. Even 
if the reformer in office is genuine, even if he has a scheme that 
promises v,e\l for the working masses, there arises the question 
of the duration of his official powers and those of his successors with 
similar aims, together -vith the persistence of the public in assid- 
uous attention to its own self-protection. AYhat may be done during 



THE LABOR REPORT. 79 

a voters' upheaval is neither a measure of what is possible to public 
administration as the decades go by nor a guarantee that the spirit 
of reform is to have no rest until the last serious grievance is ended. 
The steady strain on voters, with the distraction of new issues, is 
heavy. The public-spirited councilmen who planned Kichmond'2 
gas enterprise in 1851 provided in the City Code that on February 
1 of each year the municipal auditor should ascertain the cost of 
gas for the previous twelve months and fix its price accordingly for 
the ensuing twelve. Long ago forgotten by the public, this article 
is probably unknown at the present time to nearly all the council 
members. Directly in violation of it, the gas works revenues are 
regularly used to reduce the local taxes ; that is, those citizens who 
burn gas pay their own taxes and a part of what are justly due 
from their neighbors. The injustice is yet more flagrant in the 
case of the black taxpayers who are gas consumers, for their pay- 
ments help in giving the exclusively white gas employees wages 
far above the market rate for negroes or even for white men. 
Thrice removed from privilege, the black gas consumers live on 
under this outrage, municipal reform asleep. Their burden is not 
on the scale it might be were Eichmond a Glasgow in municipal- 
ization, but it has the sanction of time, the community's conscience 
in this respect fossilized. Birmingham, the birthplace of English 
municipalization, has exhibited in its gas works from the start a 
failure to recognize the principle that to take money from the gas 
consumers in order to reduce the rates is an arbitrary double taxa- 
tion. Birmingham's minimum wage, the lowest of the larger Eng- 
lish cities, comes down near sweatshop levels, and its provisions 
for the comfort of its gas workers are well-nigh non-existent. A 
gang of its coke-stackers, cleaning up in the foul works wash room 
after their day's work, voiced this plaint to several members of our 
committee: "This is the hardest work in Birmingham, and the 
poorest paid." Commenting on the $250,000 annually turned 
into the municipal treasury by the Birmingham works, the Gas 
Workers' Trade Union secretary said: "The poorest class of work- 
people pay an extraordinary price for gas — 3s. 2d (76 cents) — 
and what the poor burn is the backbone of the industry. Large 
consumers pay Is. 7d. (38 cents), medium, 2s. 6d. (60 cents.)" 
Contrast these various points with the same points as related to 
Sheffield's gas company. This company sells a better quality cf 
gas than Birmingham at Is. Id. (26 cents) to Is. 6d. (36 cents). 
Its employees have wages as high as those of Sheffield's municipal 
employees or higher. Their welfare as workmen is well cared for. 
The city, although it owns no stock in the company, has its inter- 
ests guarded by appointing three councilmen members of the board 
of directors. Birmingham publishes in its reports a table showing 
the amount of profits paid annually to the city by its gas consum- 
ers, amounting in ten years to $2,500,000 ; the Sheffield Company 
could well print a table showing, on the basis of the difference be- 
tween the price of its gas and Birmingham's, how it has saved twice 
that sum to Sheffield's gas consumers, meantime taking nothing 



80 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

from the municipality aud maintaining an attitude of impartial 
justice toward all citizens, gas consumers or otherwise. Sheffield and 
Birmingham thus compared afford an insight into certain pecul- 
iar and significant features of municipal and private ownership^ 
not the least of which are the fitfulness of municipalization reform 
and the permanency in the reforms established by just charter 
provisions for a company, to the immeasurable benefit of the entire 
wage working class. 

The summing-up questions in our labor inquiry must include, 
besides those relating strictly to the wages and hours and welfare 
of the hands : ^Vhich, public or private employment, assists in the 
greater honesty and efficiency of a working force, in the higher 
development of both specialized knowledge and the spirit of man- 
hood among employees? AThich promotes among the masses the 
more general use of the commodities that are produced? Which, 
hence, best aids commerce and transportation ? Wliich, while help- 
ing to insure the greatest possible volume of consumption, unfail- 
ingly stimulates initiative and invention and provides new oppor- 
tunities for the workers through the advancement of the whole 
people? Civic adjustments with a view to benefiting labor must 
have regard to clearing the political and economic field of unnec- 
essary complications, to mauitauiing the conditions most favorable 
to teclinical and general progress, and to achieving results in the 
highest, broadest and remotest degree conducive to the happiness 
of every rank of labor. The adjustments, for example, that give us 
the most widespread use of the best and cheapest gas and electricity, 
the lowest fares and the speediest transportation on the greatest 
of electric lines, are those most desirable to the entire population. 
If such ends are the better attained in free industry, necessarily 
involving private employment, to continue extending its province 
becomes one of the higher obligations of society. 

On examining municipalization as exhibited in the labor re- 
ports, it is seen to be a project to restrict men in their activities 
by methods foreign to the American genius, while in practice it has 
failed to make out the case of its advocates as in the least measure 
a step forward in promoting the best interests of the employees 
of the enterprises investigated, or of the occupations most closely 
interwoven with them, or of the nation's breadwinning masses. 

WORKING CLASS CONDITIONS. 

Many of the striking differences between the United States 
and Great Britain in labor and social conditions are illustrated 
in the industries investigated. In the United States there is an 
absence of many factors which, appearing in the inquiry in Great 
Britain, possess a significance as to the general political and 
economic state of the kingdom, and consequently as to tendencies 
there in attempts at social changes. 

There is no Municipal Employees' Association in the United 
States. The essential object of that organization — pressure on 
city officials by means of the ballot to control wages and hours — 



THE LABOR REPORT. 81 

is usually attained here through the composition and methods of 
our party machines. It is through them that our officeholder*, 
big and little, and outside organizations, labor and otherwise 
operate. 

In this country a community may have the three interests of 
local, State, and national politics united in one party executive com- 
mittee ; in Great Britain representative men of all the cities visited 
denied that any machine whatever in the American sense existed 
among them. In some of these cities any connection between local 
and national politics was also disavowed, and even where Council- 
lors were classed as Liberals and Conservatives at election it was 
asserted that in Council Conservatives at times spoke and acted as 
Radicals, while Liberals might be as reactionary as the Whigs. 

In the United States, there are nowhere such legal restrictions 
of citizenship as to cut away the laboring class vote by 25 per cent, 
or at times more, even as high as 40, as in London and Liverpool. 
Nor does there exist in this country such a relationship between 
municipality as employer and its wage-workers as to bring up for 
discussion the disenfranchisement of city employees. There are no 
multiple voting here on property, no representation by citizens liv- 
ing in territory lying outside the constituency represented, no 
selection of men of other classes as the official spokesman of the 
labor element. The American workmen have no conception of the 
British system of caste. In America there has been no recent up- 
heaval of the working classes resulting in the election of labor 
representation in Congress and the City Councils composed of 
leaders with more or less revolutionary programmes. 

The three foregoing paragraphs indicate either that the pro- 
fessional politician of Great Britain has not awakened to his op- 
portunities or that the opportunities do not exist. In either event 
that country has been barren ground for the boss, the heeler, the 
gang, and a mass of purchaseable voters represented in legislative 
bodies by a machine man. Further, our workingmen reformers 
have a different political outlook before them and different ma- 
terials to work on from those of the British workingmen reformers. 

The relations between trade unions and the municipality differ 
in the two countries : 

In Great Britain a definite policy in dealing with the trade 
unionists has been adopted by managers of municipal undertakings ; 
in this country, except in Chicago, where some of the objects of the 
unions are attained in a roundabout manner, the municipalities 
have given union officers no recognition in negotiating. 

In America, neither public nor private managers have put into 
practice a system of making individual contracts with employees to 
forestall strikes, as is done in the public Glasgow and the private 
London South Metropolitan Gas Works; nor in this country has 
any system of pensioning or labor copartnership been adopted. 

In Great Britain whatever important changes in pay and hours 
have taken place have been in connection with the municipal tram- 
way employees and the most poorly paid laborers protected by the 



82 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

" minimum wage " ; in the United States all the street and 
interurban railways are o^^'ned and operated by companies, under 
whom marked changes for the better have also taken place, while 
day laborers' wages, usually double or nearly double those of Great 
Britain, are little affected by the municipal minimum. 

In the municipalities of Great Britain there are no civil service 
regulations, as in Chicago, nor a general '^•prevailing rate" law, as 
in New York and Pennsylvania. 

Socialism and trade unionism are closer together in Great 
Britain than in America. 

In America Socialism has had no direct bearing on the de- 
velopment of the municipal enterprises investigated; in Great 
Britain prominent trade-union Socialists assert that the whole 
municipal ownership movement of the kingdom has been brought 
about by Socialist agitation. 

Those American trade unions vdiose ramifications enter into 
the four industries investigated have no Socialist platforms and 
publications, as do the unions of the laborers, gas workers and 
electrical workers of Great Britain. The American labor movement 
is overwhelmingly embodied in trade-unionism, with first reliance 
on the strike, a method which has here done the uplifting; the 
British trade union with respect to its every-day labors is a benefit 
societ}^ and with respect to its occasional militant efforts is now- 
adays the main support of Socialistic tendencies. A general strike 
in recent years has been a rarity. 

In education and democracy the American masses are im- 
measurably ahead. 

The British workingman ever since the kingdom's tardy estab- 
lishment of a school system has been the victim of crude and often 
sectarian educational methods, the removal of some of its abuses in 
the course of a series of political campaigns being recently attended 
with prolonged acrimonious public debate and the display of 
religious animosities. America long ago settled this question in 
peace. 

In Great Britain, the infiuences of the outgrown established 
church, of the feudal-minded nobilit}', of the bauble-distributing 
monarchy, and above all of landlordism, constantly irritate, hamper 
or impoverish the masses. In America no one or two men draw 
ground rent from half or two-thirds a city or a borough, as do two 
lords of the kingdom in Liverpool, or the Dukes of Bedford and 
Westminster in London. 

The extremely narrow limits to the opportunities of the masses 
in Great Britain is to the American observer a fact most striking. 
Unemplovment in America is not condemnation to hopelessness; 
pauperism is not the common lot of a large percentage of the aged 
working people. 

The objects of trade unionism in the two countries differ : 

In Great Britain the composite organization of tramway 
workers, teamsters and drivers of all sorts has a total mem- 
bership of only 12,000. In two of the largest municipal un- 



THE LABOR REPORT. 83 

dertakings investigated tlie workmen's organizations are benefit 
societies under the wing ol the managers. The Electrical Workers' 
Union was called into being to capture the work of contractors on 
city work ; its bond to maintain its continuity is made up of bene- 
fits; its organ, pessimistic and visionary in contents, is weighted 
with the propaganda of Socialism. Among the unskilled, however, 
mutual benefit trade unionism has made a progress that is 
illustrated by the existence in the small area of England of five 
national laborers' organizations, each supporting a staff of general 
officers. In none of the American enterprises investigated were the 
laborers organized, a difference in the social composition of the two 
countries being suggested by the fact that the innumerable Amer- 
ican benefit societies are rarely up on occupational lines and 
that the feature of paying benefits is by many American union 
leaders regarded as a drawback to the more profitable venture of 
striking for higher wages and lower hours. A union without benefits 
and for striking purposes only would be allowed to languish by the 
British workers. Their cliances for winning strikes are small, un- 
employment being so general now for years. Their minds are bent 
on a plodding routine of insurance in a state of chronic distress 
rather than on mastering the labor market in order to take as a 
right a larger share of an increasing national production. 

British workmen in the mass earn hardly as much money as 
our Southern negroes : 

A wide difference in the standard of earnings for the wage 
working classes of the United States and Great Britain is indicated 
in the wage scales of the undertakings investigated in the two coun- 
tries. In Glasgow the minimum municipal wage, for which thou- 
sands are working, is 21s. ($5.09) a week; in Birmingham, 23s. 
($5.57) ; in Liverpool, 243. ($5.81) ; in Manchester, 25s. ($6.07; in 
London, 28s. ($6.80). These are the rates up to which the radical 
reformers in the largest and most advanced cities have pushed the 
municipal scale for laborers, men without special skill but who are 
selected after proof of character and capability. The run of the 
human market, as taken by private employers in general, falls for 
the same class of laborers to 3s. or even 5s. less per week. But in 
the company undertakings investigated the average minimum ran 
little below that of the municipal. The other extreme of the wage 
range, the maximum, is reached by the trade union scales for skilled 
mechanics, which settles at 32s. to 34s. a week in Northeastern 
England, where, except in London, the highest rates are recorded, 
and only a shade more is earned in London itself. Turning to 
labor in the American municipal enterprises investigated, we find 
the lowest point for common white labor at $1.50 to $2 a day in 
Syracuse, $2.75 in Allegheny, $1.85 in Wheeling, $1.75 in Cleve- 
land, $1.75 in Detroit, $2 in Chicago, and $2 in Eichmond. In 
the private enterprises, the cheapest grade of labor draws $1.75 in 
Philadelphia, $1.50 in Xew Haven, $1.60 and $1.80 in Indian- 
apolis, $2 in Chicago, and $1 (negroes) in Atlanta. The weekly 
range of this grade for the municipalities in Great Britain is from 



84 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

$5.09 to $6.80; in America from $9 to $12 (omitting the excep- 
tionally high rate of $16.50 in Alleghen}^). The company range is 
just the same (omitting the Atlanta rate for negroes). In the 
United Kingdom the company rate rmis better than the municipal- 
ities in the gas works at Sheffield and Newcastle and in the South 
Metropolitan works in London, while it is slightly lower in Nor- 
wich and Dublin, with a wider difference between the municipal 
and company systems in London. 

Living is cheaper in Great Brtain only when the poor people 
go without things that all classes of Americans can have. 

A member of the Manchester City Council Committee on 
Tramways, speaking formally at a joint meeting of his committee 
and the National Civic Federation Committee on Investigation, 
said that to the w^orking man £1 in England was worth £2 in 
America, owing to the difference in the cost of living. He repeated 
a belief common among the uninformed in England. 

On this very large subject, the reader is aware, exact 
facts are frequently elusive, and opinions as to what exhaustive in- 
quiry might elicit may with reason differ. Trustworthy definitive 
statistics are not to be had. Yet not to publish one's own reading 
of the simpler facts in view, and not to give one's own conclusions 
as to the more complex phenomena so far as formed, would leave a 
duty unfulfilled. 

In what is herewith. submitted, the reader will discriminate be- 
tween the facts which are undoubted and the impressions which 
await correction. 

Of the four principal items of the married workingman's out- 
lay, food, rent, clothing and fuel, the first is the most important. 
It is usually allotted in our National Labor Department tables, on 
an average, 50 to 65 per cent, of a year's earnings. Exportations of 
American grain stuffs, meats, etc., to Great Britain, it is plain, can 
be disposed of in the United States at no more than the British 
market prices. In other words, if prices were higher in America, 
the farm products exported would be held here for the home market. 
To maintain a volume of exportation, the British prices must be the 
American producer's price plus the costs of resale and shipment to 
the British merchant. In the first four months of 1906 the United 
Kingdom imported from America 1T6,000 head of live cattle, 
820,000 hundredweight of beef, 42,000 head of live sheep, 1,500,000 
liundredweight of bacon, 400,000 hundredweight of hams, with but- 
ter, cheese, and eggs in quantities, and fruit by the shipload. This 
was not trust-owned output dumped abroad cheap, but commodities 
sold under competition. The British workingman can obviously 
in these circumstances not buy these staples of life at lower prices 
than the American. As a matter of fact, the foods of the British 
masses, aside from bread, are mostly made up of dried fish, cheap 
meats, and the common kinds of vegetables. Much the same things 
go on the table the year round. Fruit is usually dear, even in the 
short season of the British Isles. In variety, quantity and quality, 
the articles of food sold to-day in Britain's markets bear no com- 



THE LABOR REPORT. 85 

parison with those in the American. The British working classes 
ordinarily live on the poor grades of the market or go without. As 
to clothing, whatever verdict might once have been declared off-hand 
favorable to English goods and make, American observers at present 
may with reason ask to hear from American clothing and shoe 
manufacturers on the subject before the question is settled in their 
minds. Within the last twenty years the improvement in quality of 
cloth and trimmings, in cut and fit, of the American workingman's 
clothes has been one of the most notable changes in the outcome of 
any industry. The suit selling at $20 or more in England is usually 
of better cloth than one of the same price in the United States, but 
the eight or ten dollar American suit, made under a system of 
manufacture as to which the English have much to learn, is of the 
same grade of cloth as the English and of superior make. American 
shoes are sold in every city of England; American furniture, much 
cheaper than English, is on the market. Again, in these respects 
the British working classes buy sparingly as compared with Amer- 
icans of the same occupations. They wear one suit at work and 
on the street for years, with a two-shilling cap instead of a two- 
dollar derby. Their habitations are noticeably bare of furniture. 
It is significant that while in England the slot gas meter is adjusted 
for a penny in America it takes the workingman's quarter, and 
there is no mechanical difficulty in adjusting it for a shilling or 
even a sixpence. As to rents, there is as much difference in cost 
and grade of housing between English cities as between English 
and American cities, and the differences between American cities 
seem to baffle general comparisons. Further differences are in- 
troduced in this country by its three classes of working men — the 
American born, the immigrants, and the negroes. On this question, 
general averages of many local averages are liable to be deceptive, 
and quotation of particular examples cannot give the inquirer 
satisfaction. But the overcrowding common in cities of Great 
Britain — the tens of thousands in Glasgow, Liverpool, and London 
living a family of three to ten persons in a room, the hundreds of 
thousands in all the Kingdom living a family in two rooms — is un- 
known among white Americans. There are cities in Great Britain 
in which slum life is the fate of the majority of the workers. In 
the Glasgow gas works meter repair workroom, where 100 men were 
at work, the trade union speaker for the hands said that more than 
90 per cent, of them lived with their families in one room and a 
kitchen. When the low rent of the British workingman is mentioned 
it commonly connotes a neighborhood and an environment that to 
an average American would be unendurable. Moreover, what the 
tenant gets differs vastly in the two countries. An American's ideas 
of the requirements of a dwelling place are more exacting than an 
English workingman's. And when all is said, the actual outlay for a 
wage-worker's housing in Gi eat Britain, having regard to number of 
rooms, appointments, house space and yard space, is not at a per- 
centage so much lower as to impress the American who knows the 
variations existing in his own land. Last summer, Miss Octavia 



86 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

Hill opened up in an improved area in Soiithwark, London, several 
blocks of rows of cottages in which eight hundred families were to 
be accommodated. The rents for flats in these houses ran from 
5s. 6d. to 10s. 6d. per week, or about $7 to $12 a month ; five-room 
cottages were held at $18 a month. A similar scale of housing can 
be had in Philadelphia at much the same rates. For the better 
grade of cottages at Cadbury's Bourneville the rents do not seem 
low to an American acquainted with the average rents of the smaller 
cities of Xew England and Pennsylvania. 

One item in the outlay of the British workingman, taken in the 
mass, British statisticians report, exceeds by 50 per cent, that of the 
American workingman, taken in the mass. It is drink. That plain 
water is not a table clrink is a prevailing national sentiment in 
Great Britain. The most popular and usually the only meeting 
centre for the men in British factory towns is the public house. 
Eestaurant meals almost invariably include a drink other than pure 
water. This habit of the British nation must be taken into account 
in estimating the cost of living. 

The American wage workers are inspired by hope; the British 
v/agew^orkers are commonly not. 

In traveling from place to place in the United States and 
mingling among the wageworkers, the observer frequently hears 
references to achievements in the lives of laboring men formerly 
neighbors, or once of the very circle present, which convey an im- 
pression of a society thai, whatever the struggles of the mass, sees 
■constant changes of large numbers of individuals for the better. In 
Great Britain little of the talk runs this way. America has space, 
and the workers move about in it continually; it has cheap land, 
readily transferable, in suburb or country, East or West ; it has col- 
leges and universities at which many of the students are earn- 
ing their way ; it has enormous numbers of wageworkers buying 
their own homes, separately or in association; it has democracy in 
politics, and numberless openings for a political career, worthy or 
unworthy. In all these regards, Britain differs greatly as to degree 
if not wholly as to kind. The British workman travels little, can- 
not buy a farm or take free a homestead ; he rarely gets to college, 
and he regards a professional or business career as ordinarily be- 
yond his dreams. The confirmed attitude of the British workman 
toward life is discouragement; the tone of his conversation, the in- 
terpretation of his spirit, is despondency. Xot yet can this be 
said of the American workingman. 

Poverty in Great Britain has reached the point at which it is 
affrighting the nation. London alone had 140,000 paupers last 
year. It has 70,000 to 80,000 "lodgers." The general physical 
deterioration of Englishmen is shown in the repeated reductions of 
the army standard of height. The London Daily Standard, July 5 
last, said: "The upshot amounts to this, that the poor quarters in 
all our great cities have become reeking, overcrowded hives of only 
partially employed, underfed, and rapidly degenerating men and 
women, from whom fate and their own action, destiny and the con- 



THE LABOR REPORT. 87 

clitions of their life seem to have removed all rights, and all power,, 
save the continuance and reproduction of their downward-tending^ 
species." The number of emigrants last year from Britain was- 
270,000, nearly every one driven out by the menace of poverty. 
In addition to the usual appropriations for the 800,000 paupers of 
the Kingdom, $440,000 was spent last year under the Unemployed 
Workmen act, the sum this year being made $1,000,000, while 
the amount to be given h\ the local authorities and the charitable 
for the same purpose was expected to reach possibly $1,000,000 
more. Eighty-nine distress committees had been set up last year 
throughout the country. It is a generally accepted custom among 
the poor people to allow iheir parents to go to the workhouse during 
hard times. The trade union minimum wage for England in gen- 
eral outside London is $5.81 per week. The Italian swarms of labor- 
ers, who can compete with the negroes, and who underwork the Rus- 
sian Jews in J^ew York factories, have never attempted to get a 
footing in England. A tenth of the present immigration to the 
United States would precipitate in Great Britain a national dis- 
order. 

In their distressing situation many English wageworkers are 
ready to embrace any economic movement that promises even a small 
fraction of them relief. Victims of desperate social diseases, they 
have grasped at desperate social remedies. The trade unions being 
driven into political action through the Taff Vale decision, many 
of the working classes in general were stampeded on in among 
the Socialists. Their present economic tendencies find origin 
in their life-long heartrending distress, in their pent-up existence, 
in the opportunities presented by the expiration of franchises, 
and in the work of social theorists who are the product of political 
and economic conditions unknown in America, and whose teachings 
make little headway with the American masses and have been re- 
jected time and again at the conventions of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. 



LABOR AND POLITICS 



Py JOHN R. COMMONS 



In summarizing the report which Mr. Sullivan and I have 
made on political and laboi" conditions in America and Great Brit- 
ain/ it is impossible for me to pick out the sentences here and there 
favorable to municipal ownership and to discredit the sentences fa- 
vorable to private ownership. I shall take the report as a whole, 
and shall try to bring together all of the facts exactly as they are 
and in their true proportions." In order that my position may be 
more clearly understood 1 will say in advance that neither munic- 
ipal o^Tiership nor private ownership have accomplished the good 
results in the United States that should be expected of them/ and 
both are far behind what both have accomplished in Great Britain. 
I attribute this backwardness mainly to the infancy of the move- 
ment for municipal ow^nership in the United States. The Ameri- 
can people have never seriously studied in detail the financial, polit- 
ical, administrative and labor conditions necessary to make munic- 
ipal o-wnership a success, because they have never had thrown upon 
them the responsibility and necessity of making it a success. The 
question has not yet l3een big enough to attract attention, and all 
the energies of the people in municipal government have been con- 
sumed in fighting the private corporations which have possession.' 
We are in precisely the same position that British municipalities 
occupied 40 years ago in the gas business and 15 to 30 years ago 
in the street car and electricity business.^ And the two most notice- 
able facts regarding the movement in Great Britain are the steady 
improvement made in municipal operation after municipal owner- 
ship had passed the fighting stage and had become a settled policy, 
and also the great improvement in private ownership and operation 
during the same period. In comparing the two countries, I have 
been impressed by this fact more than anything else, that successful 
private operation follows successful municipal operation. The 
private companies in Great Britain have learned to accept and act 
upon a view of their public obligations which we have found to be 
utterly foreign and inconceivable to the managers of similar private 
undertakings in the United States. This is seen most strikingly 
in the fact that the British companies were willing that our en- 
gineers should make a physical valuation of their properties for 
comparison with their capitalization and their earnings, whereas the 
American companies would not permit such a valuation.'^ Many 
of the British companies also for years have been subject to com- 



I 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 89 

plete publicity of their accounts and examination of their books 
hy public auditors and accountants, thus furnishing information 
that we are not able to get in America. This kind of information 
is essential both from the standpoint of the prices paid by consum- 
ers and that of the wages paid to employees, because it enables us 
to know whether prices are as low and wages are as high as the 
companies can reasonably afford. Another instance of the higher 
view of their obligations held by British companies is the many 
precautions they have taken to conciliate their employees and to 
prevent the necessity of strikes. In every case this higher view 
lias come about because the companies have before them the menace 
of municipal ownership if they do not live up to their public obli- 
gations.' They cannot afford to have strikes, because they would 
at once arouse into action the demand for municipal ownership. 
They cannot afford to keep their accounts private, because in order 
to head off municipal ow^nership they must let the people know 
just how much profit they are making.* The consequence is that 
many of the vices which we have found in private ownership in the 
United States and which were formerly found in Great Britain 
have been largely eliminated in that country.** And at the same 
time the vices and crudities of municipal ownership which we have 
found in the United States have been largely eliminated in Great 
Britain through experience and through the accurate comparison 
which can always be made with private ownership. 

With these preliminary observations, it will be seen that in 
weighing and interpreting the facts," I cannot, as an offset to the 
summary prepared by my colleague, confine myself simply to the 
facts that discredit private ownership and exalt municipal owner- 
ship, but I must summarize all of the facts. In doing so," my inter- 
pretation requires that at least for some time to come, l)oth private 
ownership and municipal ownership be carried along side by side 
in the same country; that each municipality have full power and 
liome rule to change from one to the other according to its judg- 
ment of which it is that offers the better results in the given case ; 
and that in this way the defects of both municipal and private own- 
ership in the United States may be gradually eliminated and both 
may be brought to the higher level occupied by both in Great 
Britain. 

MONOPOLIES AND POLITICS. 

I take it that the key to the whole question of municipal or 
private ownership is the question of politics.^'' For politics is simply 
the question of getting and keeping the right kind of men to man- 
age and operate the municipal undertakings, or to supervise, regu- 
late and bargain with the private undertakings. The kinds of busi- 
ness that we are dealing with are essentially monopolies performing 
a public service, and are compelled to make use of the streets which 
are public property. If their owners are private companies they 
are compelled to get their franchises and all privileges of doing 
business, and all terms and conditions of service from the munici- 
23al authorities. And in carrying out their contract with the 



90 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

mimicipality thev are dealing continually with municipal officials. 
Consequently it is absurd to assume that private ownership is non- 
political. It is just as much a political question to get and keep 
honest or business-like municipal officials who will drive good bar- 
gains with private companies 'on behalf of the public and then see 
that the bargains are lived up to, as it is to get similar officials to- 
operate a municipal plant. We do not escape politics by resorting 
to private ownership — we only get a different kind of practical 
politics. 

Since these businesses are monopolies of public service and 
nmst make use of public property, the question of municipal owner- 
ship is entirely different from that of other kinds of business. A 
private business that has no dealings with municipal officials and 
is regulated by competition, has no place in this investigation except 
by way of contrast.'^ We have found that this difference between 
the two kinds of business is not always appreciated by certain 
classes. These are the socialists and the public utility corporations. 
The socialists are opposed to private competition in any form and 
would extend public ownership to all kinds of business. The public 
utility corporations and their defenders naturally seize upon thi« 
position of the socialists to confuse the issues respecting their own 
kind of business. The public at large is misled for a time until 
the distinction comes to he one of practical importance. This atti- 
tude of the several parties to the controversy was most clearly 
brought to our attention in Glasgow, where public ownership has^ 
been extended to all of the businesses occupying the streets. Fol- 
lowing the 'municipal tramways of 1894, many projects were 
lirought forward for further municipalization, including banking, 
housing, insurance, tailoring and baking. Councillors were elected 
favorable to these proposals, and the voters, inspired by the remark- 
able success of the tramways, were not critical in their inspection 
of these new enterprises which the council was contemplating. In 
the midst of this socialistic tide, two anti-municipal ownership 
associations were organized — the Citizens' Union and the Eate- 
Payers' Federation. They started an active agitation, and, along^ 
with other influences, the tide of municipalization has been checked 
or stopped. We were led tc believe that from these two associations 
we could secure information that would correct the universal en- 
dorsement of municipal ownership found elsewhere in Glasgow,'* 
but were surprised to And that both associations endorsed all that 
had been done in municipalizing tramways, electricity, gas, and 
water. They only opposed the municipalization of other under- 
takings competitive in character. No more conclusive endorsement 
of the success of municipal ownership in Glasgow could have been 
brought to our attention, but at the same time nothing more con- 
clusive could be offered to show that the general public cannot be 
permanently deceived by the fallacy of the socialists and the dodge 
of the franchise corporations in confusing competitive business with 
monopolistic public-service business. The essential difference is 
that the public-service lousiness is in politics, whether operated by 



LABOR AND TOLITICS. 91 

a private company or by a municipality, but the competitive busi- 
ness does not depend on politicians for its profits. 

At this point 1 am unhappily compelled to put in a word of 
personal explanation as to the facts brought out in our investiga- 
tions." I do this with the greatest reluctance and only because my 
colleague has seen fit to discredit or disclaim those portions of our 
report which deal with the political activity of public-service cor- 
porations. The personal explanation required is to the effect that 
I investigated thoroughly, or, as he says, "sifted the back-stairs and 
dark-room talk down to substantial truth," both of the political 
activities of municipal undertakings and the political activities of 
private undertakings;'" and the entire report as it stands, except 
New Haven and Philadelphia, was written by myself on the basis 
of facts which I personally investigated. I have set forth in com- 
plete detail the political facts regarding municipal operation, to 
which he confines his summary, and have also set forth in the 
same way the political facts regarding private operation. Both are 
backed by the same thoroughness of investigation," and I am as 
positive of the facts stated in the one case as in the other. 

POLITICAL EMPLOYEES. 

This can be tested by the situation of the Wheeling gas works. 
TJie secretary of the Wheeling Gas Trustees, quoted by my colleague 
as testifying to the political rottenness of the municipal gas works,, 
is the same man who testified to the political rottenness of the pri- 
vate gas, electricity and street car companies of that locality. In- 
stead of relying on his statements, I interviewed a large number 
of officials, politicians, business men, employees and others, and 
checked up his statements respecting both the- gas works and the 
corporations. This show^s that while the gas works are in politics, 
the public-service corporations are also in politics.'* The gas em- 
ployees take part in the primaries of the Eepublican party and the 
motormen and conductors of the street car companies are given 
leave of absence on pay to work in the primaries of both the Eepub- 
lican and Democratic parties. Even the officers of the street rail- 
way employees' union take part in this kind of traction politics on 
behalf of their employees. The councilmen and aldermen nom- 
inated and elected in this way control the municipal gas works 
and they control the franchises and contracts of the private com- 
panies. The "City Hall Ring" is just as much a ring of the polit- 
ical tools of the private corporations as it is a ring of municipal 
politicians. To pick out the politics of the gas works and not to 
vee that it is bound up with the politics of the private corporations^ 
would be a perverse and one-sided method of investigation. The 
report gives not selected facts, but all of the facts in the situation.'" 
Indeed, the secretary of the Wheeling Gas Trustees, in his indigna- 
tion towards the political management of the gas works, referred 
to by my colleague, was defeated in the Eepublican primaries by 
the motormen and conductors of the street car company on leave 
of absence as political workers. 



02 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

Tn cities other tlia)i Wheeling the convention system prevails 
instead of tlie direct primaries, and consequently it was not found 
that the wage earners of the private companies took a similar 
active part in political campaigns. But in Syracuse, Allegheny 
Indianapolis and Philadelphia, where municipal employees are 
named hy politicians, it wiis found also that street car, electric, gas 
and water comj)anies had employed men on the recommendation 
of coimcilmen, mayor or chairman of a political committee.'" This 
practice was carried furthest by the street car com])anies of Syra- 
cuse and Alleglieny. In Chicago, where a most rigid civil service 
law is enforced, no evidence of political appointments could he 
found in the municipal electricity or water departments during 
recent years, but men were hired on recommendation of aldermen 
by the private electrical companies at the time when their contract?} 
were Ix^fore the council for renewal. 

There is a distinction which has been found in all of these 
cases betw(;en |)oliti('al apixuntments in municipal undertakings and 
political apj)()intments by franchise cor])orations.''" The alderman 
or mayor who secun.'S the appointment of a political supporter on 
a municipal job exerts hiiuselt' just as nmch to retain that man in 
his job as he did to get the appointment for him. But both he and 
his supporters take a diii'erent view when the appointment is 
secured with a street railway, gas or electric company. The alder- 
man then says, "I get the job for you, but you must make good; I 
cannot keep the job for you; the com})any has the right to discharge 
you if you don't do your work." It is for this reason that the pri- 
vate company has an advantage over the munici])al management 
under the spoils system, for it can get rid of a political appointee 
after trying him out and finding him inefhcient. This explains 
also why it is that the employees of a franchise corporation, even 
though they get their appointments through politicians, are never- 
theless found to take an active part in organizing themselves in a 
trade union, but where they depend on the politicians for retaining 
their jobs and im))roving their wages and conditions they do not 
look to a union Tor protection. \Vh(vre the {)oliticians' support 
Hto})s after appointment, as in a ])rivate undertaking, they are more 
likely to protect themselves by organizing a union. ^JMie result is 
simibir in a municipal und<'rtaking when civil service reform 
releases the employee froui depending on a politician. The trade 
unions in Chicago have no dilliculty in organizing the workmen 
who have been appointed through the Civil Service Commission, 
but they are not abb; to get the "hold-overs" who came in througii 
])olitical ])ull. 

Curiously enough, the politician profits more in some respects 
l)y the appointments which Ik; secures for bis supporters with a 
rrancbise company than Ik; does by those on municipal jubs. Since 
all parties understand Ouit the alderman's influence stops after 
appointment, there is no ill feeling on the ])art of his supporter 
if lie is discharged. He and his family and friends continue to be 
tlic supporters of the alderman who has done his best for them, and 



LABOR AND TOLITICS. 03 

liis discharge at the same time makes room for tlie alderman to 
name another man who also with his family and friends become 
supporters. It is ditfereni in municipal employment, where it is 
expected that the politician who gets the job for his follower will 
keep it for him. 1 1' he is removed from that job he loses conlidence 
in the ability or good faith of tlie politician. On account of these 
diiferences in the attitude of workmen, politicians and manager.^, 
the private corporation in politics is more ethcient from the stand- 
point of its stockholders than the municipal undertaking in polities, 
and at the same lime the capable politician can build up his organi- 
zation just as effect ively under one system as under the other.*^ 
Where civil service rules are enforced, as in the Chicago Electric 
and Water departments, this political inlluence is excluded, but 
there is no way of preventing a private corporation from hiring 
its employees on the recommendation of a politician. 

There are other differences which operate to the advantages of 
the private corporation. Its employees are more minutely special- 
ized, and a few positions of a pernuuient, semi-political character 
are created which are kept distinct from the technical and admin- 
istrative positions, whereas in the n\unicipal undertaking, without 
civil service rules, a larger proportion of the positions are likely 
to be semi-political. The municipal undertaking is compelled to 
keep a few sub-managers, foremen and inspectors who are familiar 
with the layout of the plant and distributing system, and such posi- 
tions have been found to be permanent, while the other positions 
are subject to political vicissitude. In the private corporations 
investigated the political positions are found not so much in the 
operating department as in the legal department and among the 
directors, presidents, and highest otlicials.*"' These nuike the bargains 
directly, by means of a cash consideration or otherwise, with the 
political managers. Only where nominations are made by direct 
primaries, as in Wheeling, has it been found that the rank and tile 
of the employees are retained on account of this political iniluence. 

Under the convention system of nominations the principal 
activity of private corporations was found to be that of contribu- 
tions to the expenses of campaign committees ami candidates. It 
is difficult to see that it is necessarily dishonorable or corrupt for 
any citizen to contribute according to his ability toward the ex- 
penses of his political party in conducting a campaign. The edu- 
cation of the voters respecting the issues is of the greatest im- 
portance and requires coi responding expenditures. But for some 
reason these contributions are looked upon as strictly confidential, 
and it was only through the accident of my personal acqiuiintanee 
with certain participants in Syracuse and Indianapolis that any 
information on the point was given to me. This shows a contribu- 
tion of $'.\000 in Syracuse by two directors of the gas company 
to the Democratic campaign committee, in a municipal election. 
It shows contributions at Indianapolis by the water companv in 
the municipal campaign of 1903 of $300, and in li)05 of $1,500 
to the Democratic committee, and in 1905 of $5,000 to the Kepub- 



94 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

lican committee. In 1905 the street ear compan}^ paid $10,000 to 
the Eepublican committee, and $2,000 to the Democratic committee, 
and the gas company paid $17,000 to the Eepublican committee. 
The Eepublican administration, elected in 1905, has to deal with 
important franchises and contracts renewable during its term. Pro- 
fessor Gra3''s investigations of the Xew Haven water company show 
that the president of the common council which granted a perpet- 
ual franchise to the company was one of the company's own em- 
ployees and that the company expended $20,457.^4 to get this 
franchise through the council and the legislature, in addition to 
the fees of $1,498.89 paid to the regular counsel for drawing up 
the contract. 

EFFICIENCY OF MUNICIPAL OPERATION. 

Whatever weakens or corrupts city government in its admitted 
duties of protecting the health, property, life and morals of its 
citizens also weakens or corrupts it in operating public utilities or 
in regulating the private operation of those utilities. \\'e cannot 
separate the question of municipal or private operation from the 
question of honest and efficient city government in every other 
department. The municipal corporation is a unit, and the supply 
of either water, gas, electricity or transportation is only a single 
department of its work, and is good or bad to the same extent that 
the other departments of police, fire, health, parks and taxes are 
good or bad. When we investigate the politics and labor of these 
four public utilities we are investigating the whole question of 
municipal government. If the conditions are such that the city 
does not operate or regulate these utilities satisfactorih^, we find 
that it does not do anything else satisfactorily. This fact is abun- 
dantly demonstrated when we take up one by one the several factors 
that go to make up the total political life of a city. 

First is the suffrage. In all of the Northern cities of the 
United States the suffrage is on the universal manhood basis. In 
the Southern cities it is restricted by education or poll-tax require- 
ments, and in British cities by tenant, lodger and household limita- 
tions. These restrictions bear most heavily on the wage-earning 
classes, amounting to the exclusion of one-fourth to two-fifths of 
the wage-earners. But the classes excluded are the casual and 
irregular laborers, the pauperized and indifferent workers, the 
hoodlum and hooligan elements. These are mainly the unorganized 
laborers, so that in England the trade unions have the field to them- 
selves more than they have in the United States for entering upon 
a political movement. They are not compelled to make alliances 
with political bosses who know how to get these unorganized voters. 
In two Xorthern cities, Indianapolis and Syracuse, definite infor- 
mation was obtained of bribery of the voters. In Indianapolis the 
bribable voters are largely the colored element of the town, and in 
Syracuse the hoodlum, immigrant and colored element of the down- 
town precincts. Among these voters a large part of the campaign 
contributions is distributed.^* 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 95 

Xext to the suffrage are the qualifications of the councillors, 
aldermen and city officials. In the British cities only the council- 
lors are elected, one each year, holding three years for each ward. 
The councillors elect the aldermen and the city officials. Most 
important of all, the councillors and aldermen are not required to 
live in the wards they represent, and many of them live in the 
suburbs. One-half to four-fifths of the councillors and aldermen 
live outside the wards they represent, and the proportion is strik- 
ingly larger in the working-class wards, which elect two-thirds to 
nine-tenths of their councillors from outside. Many inquiries were 
made as to the reasons, on the part of voters, for this indifference 
as to the place of residence of their candidates, and the explanation 
that seems adequate is the absence of campaign and corruption 
funds and the inability of councillors to find jobs for their con- 
stituents. The councillor in Glasgow who is most active in pressing 
for jobs in the mAmicipal service lives in the ward which he repre- 
sents, among constituents in need of employment. Furthermore, 
councillors and aldermen are unsalaried. This freedom of choice 
makes it possible to elecc both the leading business men and the 
leading labor men to govern the city. Not only do we find eminent 
bankers, financiers and employers of labor in the councils, but we 
find the secretaries and officials of trade unions, most of them living 
outside the wards they represent. The absence of such leaders and 
truly representative men from American city councils is the most 
discouraging fact brought to our attention.^^ We have not found 
any of the leading business men corresponding to those in British 
cities. The largest delegation of wage-earners which we found was 
in the city of Wheeling, where they number fourteen, but not one 
of them was an official or representative of a trade-union, although 
the unions are stronger in Wheeling than in the other places visited. 
There the wage-earning councillors were largely the employees of 
corporations whose owners Avere interested in the public utility cor- 
porations. Their campaign expenses were paid from those sources, 
and their successful qualities were those of a good "mixer" with 
the voters and obedience to their employers in casting their votes 
as councilmen. In other cities not provided with the direct primary 
system of nominations there were practically no wage-earners in 
the council. 

In American cities the form of organization has been found to 
be most complicated. Authority and responsibility are scattered 
here and there in a mayor, a commission, a superintendent, a coun- 
cil, a committee of the council, or even two committees, sometimes 
a joint committee of two branches of the council, a civil service 
commission, and so on. The finances and accounts of municipal 
undertakings are mixed with those of other departments. Scarcely 
any system that we have investigated would for a moment be 
recognized as satisfactory for an effective business management ."" 
The voters are unable to tell who is responsible or what exactly are 
the financial results. The one pre-eminent advantage of private 
operation is centralized control by one man, subject to a board of 



96 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

directors. This is also the form of organization of the British 
cities, where a committee oi the council takes the place of the board 
of directors, and the manager, selected by the committee, holds his 
position not for a fixed term but permanently, or imtil removed. 
The American system most nearly corresponding is the commission 
system of South Xorwalk and Detroit, which permits the selection 
of men from any part of the city and retains a number of them 
when others drop out. 

The foregoing statements refer only to the legal or formal 
organization of British ard American cities. The real political 
influences behind this formal organization are found in the con- 
flicting interests of the voters Avho elect or control the city officials. 
In both countries the interests that are most important in deciding 
the results are those of the saloon-keepers, real estate owners, ^^olit- 
ical parties, trade unions, municpal emplo3'ees, business classes, 
contractors and franchise corporations. 

In both countries the saloons, known in England as the "public 
house," or "pub," are regulated by the municipal council."" Thi^ 
compels them in self protection to take a part in politics. In some 
places, like Glasgow, their candidates make a pretense of standing 
for workingmen, and they appeal to the labor vote in support of 
labor measures in the council. In other places like Liverpool the 
large brewery interests enter the field as capitalists, and elect their 
partners to the council. . In American cities the saloon interest i& 
an important wheel of the political machine. In any case their can- 
didates are elected, not "^'or the sake of efficient government, but 
really in order to weaken the government that endeavors to regulate 
their private business. 

Much less evidence was found of real estate dealers and specu- 
lators in British cities than in American cities. Owing perhaps 
to the system of landed property and the jealousy of the landed in- 
terest, real estate speculation is very quiet and subdued in British 
cities. The councils, outside London, are almost exclusively of the 
commercial, manufacturing, profession and labor classes. The 
purchase and sale of sites either by a council or by a company, and 
the selection of routes, arc so jealously controlled by the landed 
interest intrenched in the House of Lords, that land speculation 
in connection with public utilities does not greatly influence the 
local councils. 

In all of the cities visited in Great Britain, except Glasgow and 
London, it was found that national political parties managed the 
municipal elections. The exception in Glasgow is mainly owing 
to the fact that there the Liberal party is so overwhelming that the 
Tories have no chance. Even the committees that manage the 
municipal undertakings are selected so that the dominant party of 
the council has majorities. In two places, however, Leicester and 
Birmingham, an eminent financier of the opposite party is elected 
to the head of the fi.nance committee. Party politics in itself is 
not a barrier to successful municipal operation. 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 97 

The part taken by the working classes in the election of coun- 
cillors in England is divided into two stages. The few labor mem- 
bers elected ten to twenty years ago came in as members of the 
Liberal party and they retain that allegiance. They are first Lib- 
erals and secondarily trade unionists. The second stage is that 
of the Labor party of the past five years, in which the trade unioms 
have joined with one wing of the socialists.^^ The object of the 
Labor party has been that of getting legislation to protect the 
funds of trade unions from attachment by the courts. It has, 
however, organized local branches for municipal elections. Much 
the largest number of candidates put up by the Labor party are 
the salaried officials of the unions, who, if elected, retain their union 
position. They are not usually "organizers" or "agitators,'' for the 
British unions do not have such salaried positions, but they are the 
official secretaries who are at the same time the experienced nego- 
tiators with employers. A much smaller class of so-called "labor 
councillors" are the socialists, who are generally small merchants, 
employers or professional inen, with a program more radical than 
that of the trade-unionists. Finally, there were found a half dozen- 
political adventurers of the "fakir" type, not nominated by the 
Labor party, but taken' up by the Liberals, Tories or public-house- 
interests to draw off the vote of the Labor party. In general, while 
some criticism was heard from aged councillors or from old-line- 
trade-union Liberals, to the effect that the new labor movement, 
was deteriorating the character of the councils, yet the criticism 
was confined to the lack of business and financial capacity, to the 
inability to take "broad" views of municipal business, and to the 
efforts to find municipal v/ork for applicants. With the exception 
of the half dozen adventurers, no criticism is made of their integ- 
rity or earnestness and sincerity of purpose in urging the cause they 
advocate; while in the case of the trade-union officials there was ^ 
general agreement on the part of all classes that they brought a 
kind of intelligence and a point of view that was needed in the 
council's deliberations as a large employer of labor. 

ORGANIZATIONS OF MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES. 

The increase in municipal owTiership in Great Britain has, of 
course, brought an increase in the number of municipal employees^ 
and this has caused apprehension in certain quarters. Generally 
the chief officers of the jnunicipal enterprises take the ground that 
they and other emplo3'e<}s should not vote in municipal elections, 
and they openly set that example to their subordinates.'' Some ox 
them go even so far as to advocate the disfranchisement of munici- 
pal employees in municipal elections. This has also been advocated 
by some of the councillors. However, such a proposition is no 
longer seriously considered. If the vote of municipal employees is 
a menace the remedy must be looked for in directions other than 
disfranchisement. It goes without proof that such a remedy is 
needed,'" for mimicipal employees sooner or later cast their votes for 
candidates who promise or have secured a betterment of their con- 



98 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

dition, regardless of its elTect on the enterprise as a wliole. Omit- 
ting disfranchisement, there are two directions in which such a rem- 
edy can be found, first a limit to be set beyond which municipaliza- 
tion shall not go, and second, the attitude of the public and espe- 
cially of the workmen in private employment. 

Although there are doctrinaire and socialistic elements that 
set no limit to public ownership, the overwhelming sentiment of 
those now in control of the municipal councils places a limit at the 
point already reached by cities like Glasgow, Manchester, and 
Leicester. With this practical agreement there is no prospect that 
the number of municipal employees will be materially increased 
beyond the proportion reached in Glasgow, where their voting 
strength is possibly one-sixteenth of the total. The total number 
employed by the London County Council and the London Borough 
Councils is about one-fourteenth of the registered voters.''' 

The natural tendency of municipal employees to better their 
own condition by use of their political strength is seen in the 
growth of the Municipal Employees' Association. This is a spuri- 
ous form of trade unionism which has sprung up with the growth 
of municipalization, and nothing of its kind has been found among 
American unions. It has gained affiliation with other unions in 
the Trades Union Congress and in local Trades Councils. Its 
platform is simple enough: to prohibit strikes, to oppose council- 
lors at the polls if they stand in the way of granting its demands, 
and to call on other unions for help in the elections. Its demands 
are in excess of anything that other unions have been able to se- 
cure from private employers or even from municipal corporations. 
It invites into membership all employees of municipalities, and 
since they are nearly all eligible to other unions, evidently the aim 
of this organization is to separate a privileged class of workmen, 
and to do this through the political power of those whom they 
abandon. It weakens other unions while building on their support. 
With even a minimum of intelligence in the other unions such a 
parasitic union would be repudiated. Such has been the fate of 
the Municipal Employees' Association. As long as its member- 
ship was small the consequences of its policy were not observed, 
and its demands received the uncritical assent of others in the 
general approval of all efforts to raise wages. But with its rapid 
growth during the past two years, the unions of unskilled workmen, 
who suffered first from its competition for members, brought their 
protest to the Trades Union Congress in 1906, and that body, after 
careful deliberation, repudiated the Municipal Employees' Asso- 
ciation and all similar organizations of public employees by the 
practically unanimous vote of 1,196,000 to 42,000. It is thus 
promptly^ settled, before this organization had reached 15,000 
members throughout Great Britain, that the trade union world ib 
clearly opposed, both in sentiment and self-interest, to the creation 
of a privileged class of municipal employees. As far as the reg- 
ular trade unions are concerned the principle of trade-union wages, 
rising and falling in municipal employment the same as in private 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 99 

employment, is accepted in its full significance. Without the sup- 
port of the regular unions the strength of the Municipal Employees' 
Association has disappeared. It was a temporary phase of the 
rapid increase of municipal ownership.'' 

Our investigations ha\e shown that the proper method of deal- 
ing with employees is the most difficult and critical problem of 
municipal ownership. The appointment, promotion and dismissal 
of employees and the wages to be paid offer peculiar opportunities 
for political and personal influence inconsistent with efficiency. 
Civil service reform, so-called, has been found in its highest per- 
fection in the city of Chicago, but it is evident by comparison witn 
a less perfect device In Syracuse that its integrity depends on the 
political influences thii- ontrol the mayor and the heads of depart- 
ments. If the head o. he department is independent of politics, 
as shown in Cleveland, Detroit and South Norwalk, the civil ser- 
vice commission is not needed.^^ The Chicago system is a temporary 
bulwark built around the departments until such time as the chief 
officer himself can also be protected from political selection. This 
is the case in British cities where the idea of a civil service com- 
mission is unknown.'* But even there, especially in the Sheffield 
tramways, appointments have been made on the recommendation 
of councillors. The experience of Glasgow^ is instructive. Fifteen 
years ago the practice of hiring emplo3'ees on the recommendation 
of councillors was universal in all departments. But with the 
growth of municipal ownership it has almost disappeared.** This 
is partly because several thorough investigations of alleged favor- 
itism have been made by the council ; partly because public spirited 
business men have exposed the evil, have made it clear to the voters 
and have been elected to the council on the issue of driving out 
favoritism; and partly because the adoption of the minimum wage 
policy of the labor members has stopped the practice of councillors' 
unloading and pensioning their old employees on the municipal 
pay-roll.'" The only remnant of the practice discovered after a 
thorough investigation in Glasgow was in the unskilled work of 
the tramways, and this came about through the effort of that de- 
partment during the industrial depression of 1905-6 to aid the 
city government in finding work for the unemployed. The press- 
ure for employment during the depression was enormous and all 
managers were besieged by hundreds of applicants. A card of 
introduction from a councillor secures at least the privilege of 
filling out an application blank, and this amounts to a limited pref- 
erence over those who do not have such cards, but the managers fol- 
low up the application by a thorough examination before making 
appointments. In other places all charges of favoritism were care- 
fully investigated and they were found to be baseless, except in the 
case of motormen and conductors at Sheffield. These are selected 
on the recommendation of councillors. The Manchester Tramway 
Committee, at the beginning of its organization, recognizing the 
possible evil, adopted a rule instructing their manager not only 
not to pay attention to letters from councillors but to give prefer- 
ence to applicants who have no such recommendations. 



100 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

Our investigations have shown that the strongest safeguard 
for a manager against the pressure of outside recommendations is 
the recognition of organized labor within his department/' Wher- 
ever we have found a class of employees organized and dealt wdth 
as such through their representatives we have found those positions 
exempt from politics. This follows from the nature of labor or- 
ganization which cannot survive if individuals are given preference 
on political, religious, personal or any other grounds than the char- 
acter of the work they do. Even in the politically honeycombed 
municipal undertaking of Allegheny, the union of electrical work- 
ers stopped the practice of paying assessments by its members for 
political campaigns. The success of the civil service S3'stem of 
Chicago is owing more than anything else to the fact that organ- 
ized labor has one of the three members on each examining board. 
The manager of the Manchester Tramways ascribes his freedom 
from interference by individual councillors to his recognition of 
the union that holds 90 per cent, of his motormen and conductors.^ 

PRIVATE COMPANIES AND MUNICIPAL COUNCILS. 

The foregoing is a review of several interests which have been 
discovered as tending to weaken the efficiency and integrity of 
municipalities in the operation or regulation of monopolies, to- 
gether with the factors that tend to correct these evil tendencies. 
In inquiring into the pari played by all of them,"^ including saloon- 
keepers, real estate speculators, party politicians, and municipal 
employees, the most impressive fact in Great Britain is the ab- 
sence of any political "machine" which could bring them together 
and line them up under a centralized control. Whatever corrupt- 
ing or incapacitating tendencies there may be in these several in- 
terests that come into conflict with good administration, each worKs 
by itself and there is no permanent interest or class of manip- 
ulators which thrives by marshaling them together in a perpetual 
onslaught and undermining of the city government. Public spir- 
ited and independent citizens are not compelled to enter into bar- 
gains nor to make promises to a political organization, which would 
disgust them with a position on the Town Council. This absence 
of a powerful machine is mainly due to the fact that there are no 
great financial bargains at stake, such as municipal contracts or 
franchises, whose owners have a direct interest in breaking do"\Mi 
city government. None of the menacing factors above mentioned 
is large enough, and all of them combined cannot gain enough, to 
warrant them in making large contributions to an expensive or- 
ganization for the control of elections and appointments. The 
brewery interest is practically the only interest of financial impor- 
tance whose profits can be menaced by acts of the Council, but the 
menace to it is based on moral and not financial grounds. In re- 
sisting this menace it does not directly attack the business integ- 
rity of the Council, but, more important, there is no opportunity 
for it to make an alliance wdth contractors and franchise specula- 
tors who could increase their profits and make sharper bargains 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 101 

with the city if the councillors were weak or corrupt, or under the 
control of a machine which they must support. The absence of 
powerful financial opponents of good government leaves the way 
open for business men to enter the councils and to attack abuses 
or defend the interests of the city without risking their private 
business or antagonizing their social circle. The eminent bankers, 
financiers, and merchants who serve the cities as aldermen on the 
finance committees are free to do so because neither they nor their 
clients or business associates are interested in stocks which might 
be depreciated if they helped the city to drive a good bargain. 
These men are often the directors in large manufacturing, railway 
and other private companies. Councillors and aldermen on the gas, 
water, electricity and tramways committees are even stockholders 
and directors in private gas and water companies of other towns. 
It would be impossible for such men to act conscientiously on the 
great board of municipal directors, and to give the town the same 
kind of service as they gi\'e to their private companies, if they or 
their business associates v/ere interested in companies which had 
business relations with the Council. Neither could the medium and 
smaller business men and employers afford to accept positions on 
the councils and take the independent stand they do, if the bankers 
and large business men on whom they depend for credits and sales 
were interested in the stocks of franchise companies.*" With these 
great antagonistic interests out of the way, the business men of the 
town find, not only that their private business is not menaced, but 
that the conditions of all private business are greatly improved, if 
they lend their abilities to the improvement of municipal business. 
The time which they take from their private affairs is often not 
even a business sacrifice. The honor and distinction of public 
service on the council is really an advertising asset in their private 
business. It would be a liability if they were called upon to an- 
tagonize large financial interests. 

I do not hold that the contrast in American cities gives evi- 
dence that the private corporations which we have investigated 
have taken the initiative in corrupting and weakening the municipal 
councils. The initiative has just as often come from corrupt offi- 
cials who "hold up" the corporations. The real question is not. Who 
is to blame? or. Is it blackmail or is it bribery? but the real ques- 
tion is, What is the situation that compels officials, campaign com- 
mittees and corporations to resort to blackmail and bribery? 
Plainly by comparison of Am.erican and British cities the answer 
. is found in the enormous profits at stake on municipal elections.*' 

It is the absence of a political machine and its financial con- 
tributions that also makes possible the election in British cities of 
remarkable groups of Labor councillors. With but few exceptions 
the labor members are representative of the best elements of the 
trade unions. Although tliey lack the financial experience of busi- 
ness men they contribute a valuable knowledge of labor conditions 
on w^hich successful management of municipal undertakings de- 
pends. Men of their integrity and earnestness have the opportunity 



102 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

to come forward because the trade unions are not undermined nor 
their leaders bribed by the paid agents of a political machine." And 
the financial interests that would profit by the election of weak or 
dishonest labor candidates are not powerful enough to subsidize the 
astute agents needed by the machine for the purpose. 

A contrast with this situation appears in two of the places 
visited where private companies operate public utilities. The 
municipal council of Xewcastle-on-Tyne is decidedly inferior in 
quality and ability to others," and two of the leading financiers on 
the council declared that their only reason for remaining in the 
position is the election which the council gives them as corporation 
representatives on the Tyne Improvement Commission. The pres- 
ence of private gas, electricity and water companies, with their rep- 
resentatives in the council, prevents the leading business men from 
interesting themselves in the success of the municipal government, 
while an equivocal class of labor agitators takes advantage of the 
situation to get elected to the council. Sheffield, also, with its influ- 
ential gas company, is the only town visited where the employees 
in the tramway and street departments are appointed through the 
influence of councillors. In that town there is a peculiar induce- 
ment for the eminent business men in charge of the gas company 
to look with approval on the election of inferior councillors, because 
the council elects three of its members as directors of the company. 
The strength of the company is seen in the incompetency of these 
municipal directors, who are kept in ignorance of essential details 
in its afi^airs. With councillors of this inferior type and with the 
indifference of business men to the management of municipal af- 
fairs, the result is seen in the absence of any protest against prac- 
tices which are undermining the municipal undertakings. 

Certain effects of the municipal ownership movement in Great 
Britain on the private companies are evident. The Sheffield Com- 
pany, under the far-seeing management of Sir Frederick Mappir;, 
has directed its policy for many years with the distinct purpose of 
meeting the arguments for municipal ownership. To avoid agita- 
tion it has refrained from going to Parliament for permission to 
increase its capital stock. Consequently it has distributed its large 
surplus proflt in the form of reduced prices for gas and betterments 
to its plant. Most instructive of all is the attitude of the companies 
toward their employees. With the sentiment of municipal owner- 
ship ready to explode," the companies cannot afford to risk a strike. 
The Newcastle gas company has met this situation by a willing 
recognition of the gas workers' union and by a resort to arbitration 
through which wages have been materially raised. The South 
Metropolitan Company has developed its copartnership scheme with 
astonishing shrewdness and careful attention to details, so that 
every disaffected workman is silent or dismissed. The Sheffield 
Company, although its president had openly attacked and wrecked 
trade unions in his private business, contented itself with gradually 
undermining the gas workers' union, through the payment of wage? 
and bonuses superior to those paid by other private employers of the 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 103 

district, and even in the case of unskilled labor, superior to those 
paid by the corporation of Sheffield. 

TRADE UNIONS AND WAGES. 

The influence of wage-earners through their unions upon the 
conditions of municipal c-mployment in the United States has been 
complicated through the presence and activity of practical politi- 
cians. In the municipal enterprises investigated, except South Nor- 
walk and Eichmond, the eight-hour day has been established for th(^ 
past ten or fifteen years for all employees, whereas in the private 
companies the hours are longer or have more recently been reduced 
for a portion, but not all, of their employees in the more skilled 
branches of work. This advantage in municipal undertaldngs has 
been brought about, not by a definite labor party, but by the influ- 
ence of wage-earners as \oters upon the municipal officials.*' 

A curious contrast, how^ever, presents itself in the wages paid 
by contractors on municipal work. While the larger cities in their 
own employment reduced the hours several years before similar 
reductions were made by British municipalities, yet, unlike the Brit- 
ish municipalities, provision was not made requiring contractors on 
municipal works to observe the hours and wages paid by the munici- 
palities themselves. It has only been within the past five or six 
years that a definite movement was undertaken by the wage-earning 
element to extend these provisions to contractors, and this, on ac- 
count of adverse decisions of the courts, led to the adoption in New 
York of a constitutional amendment in 1905 stipulating that the 
prevailing rate of wages should be paid by contractors on the work 
of the State or its sub-divisions. This clause has recently been 
adopted by the city of Chicago. The hand of the politician is seen 
in the omission of the contractors from the requirement respecting 
wages and hours, since by this device he was able to win both the 
wage-earners and the contractors to his support. But with the more 
extensive organization of wage-earners and their independence of 
the politicians, the contractors are placed on the same basis as the 
municipality. 

In only one case investigated in the United States is there a 
formal trade agreement between the union and a municipal depart- 
m.ent," namely, that of the electricity department of Chicago, but 
since permanent appointments in that and other departments of 
Chicago are controlled by the Civil Service Commission, the effect 
of this agreement is to control only the temporary or sixty-day 
appointments. The unions, however, are recognized by the Civil 
Service Commission to the extent that an officer of the union con- 
cerned is appointed as one of the three members of the examining 
board which passes upon applicants for municipal positions. The 
other two members are employers or technical experts selected by 
the commission outside the municipal service. The consequence of 
this arrangement is that the unions are satisfied that the Civil 
Service law is honestly administered, and at the same time the non- 
union workm.en are protected against discrimination. In Great 



104 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

Britain there are two undertakings. Birmingham gas and Man- 
chester tramways, which have trade agreements with the unions, 
and in all other places the same result is reached by the provision 
requiring the payment of trade-union rates of wages." 

The municipal undertakings in both countries are necessarily 
"open shop," in the sense that employment is open both to union 
and non-union men. In the case of the more skilled trades this 
usually results in the employment of imion men, depending partly 
on the attitude of the manager."** This attitude is favorable to the 
unions in all of the British municipalities except Liverpool and 
is favorable in the American cities of Cleveland, Detroit and Ch> 
cago. In these places tl-e managers consult the union officers in 
arranging wages, hours, and conditions of work. The three Amer- 
ican places mentioned are those where the political machine, sup- 
ported by the contractors and franchise corporations, has been elim- 
inated from the control of the city government by a popular revolt 
against the corporations. But in Allegheny, Syracuse, Wheeling 
and Indianapolis," where a combination of politicians and franchise 
corporations is in control of the municipal government, the attitude 
is distinctly hostile to the unions, and appointments and promotions 
are made with reference to the political adherence of the employees. 
The exception to this statement is found in the Allegheny electric 
undertaking to the extent that the Electrical Workers' Union has 
organized the linemen. In this case appointments are not made on 
political grounds and the linemen do not pay the assessments re- 
quired of other employees. Of the private companies investigated 
in Great Britain, all of tliem except one were hostile to union labor. 
The exception is the N"ewcastle gas, which has had open-shop agree- 
ments with a gas workers' union during seventeen years. In the 
United States all of the private companies are hostile to union 
labor.'" Most of the companies in both countries protested that they 
were not hostile, while only one asserted positively that it was, but 
the acts and policies of all, as shown by our investigations, demon- 
strate their hostility. The situation respecting each branch of or- 
ganized labor in both classes of undertakings is briefly as follows : 

The Electrical Workers' Union throughout the United States 
numbers about 21,000 members. Its principal strength is found 
among the wiremen, who are associated with other skilled trades in 
the construction of buildings, among shop men in manufacturing 
establishments, and among linemen employed by telephone com- 
panies. The organization has a much smaller proportion of tho 
employees of electric light and street railway companies. It has no 
organization among private companies coming under our investiga- 
tion. It has an organization in the Detroit Electric Company, 
which we used for comparison with the Detroit municipal undertak- 
ing. The presence of tho municipal enterprise, with its eight-hour 
day and its recognition of the Electrical Workers' Union during the 
past eight years, has served as a standard by which tliis private 
company has endeavored to guide itself and to put itself in as favor- 
able position before the public as the municipal undertaking. The 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 105 

compan}^ indeed has created a semi-pension position for the presi- 
dent of the Electrical Workers' local imion, giving him leave of 
ahsence to use his influence among aldermen and the working people 
of the town at times when the council has before it an ordinance 
for the regulation or reduction of rates or services. The situation 
is different in Chicago, ^yhere a local union of the same organiza- 
tion has been defeated in strikes by the electricity companies and 
where the union is able to maintain its scale of wages and secure 
employment with those companies only in the branches of work 
connected with the building trades where it has the support of other 
trade unions in the town. Even in that exceptional circumstance, 
the union has been compelled to allow its men to work at 15 cents 
a day less than the scale paid by the municipality and by other fair 
employers. The organization is not represented in the municipal 
enterprise of South Nor walk, although the local union has officially 
declared that undertaking to be a "fair shop" and permits its mem- 
bers to work alongside municipal employees who are not members. 

The situation of the Electrical Workers' Union in Great Britain 
is somewhat similar to that of the corresponding organization in 
this country. It, however, has been handicapped by the fact that the 
powerful association of Amalgamated Engineers (machinists) has 
always claimed electrical v.^orkers as coming under its jurisdiction. 
Four other unions also claim jurisdiction over the electrical workers. 
The Amalgamated Engineers are interested more in the organiza- 
tion of fitters, turners and blacksmiths than in the organization of 
electrical workers, pattern makers and other smaller elements 
claimed by them. It has only been in the past year that the Amal- 
gamated Engineers recognized the Electrical Trade Union and con- 
sented to their admission on equal terms in the Engineering and 
Shipbuilding Federation. One consequence of the conflict with 
other unions is that the Electrical Workers' Union'^ in that country 
has not been aggressive ^nd has limited itself practically to munici- 
pal employees and the employees of contractors on municipal work. 
It has only recently begun organizing the shop men in manufactur- 
ing establishments, but has no men with any of the private com- 
panies investigated. 

The stationary firemen's organization includes about 13,000 
members throughout the United States,'" of whom 4,000 are in New 
York City. This organization is not strongly represented in any 
of the places investigated except Chicago and Cleveland, v,^here it 
includes all of the firemen in the municipal electric and water works. 
The union was defeated in a strike by the Commonwealth and Edi- 
son companies of Chicago and has no representation now in their 
employment. It has members in the municipal undertaking of De- 
troit, but not in Syracuse, Eichmond or Wheeling, nor in any of the 
private undertakings. This union claims jurisdiction over stokers 
in gas works, but none of its members were found either in the 
municipal or the private gas undertakings. 

The national union of stationary engineers,'^ with its 17,500 
members, has members in the municipal undertakings of Cleveland, 



106 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

Detroit, Allegheny, AVheeling, and Chicago, but not in Richmond 
nor in any of the private undertakings. 

The firemen and engineers of Great Britain are claimed by a. 
half dozen organizations, all of them weak and conflicting and none 
of them represented in any of the establishments visited. "Where 
the gas workers' union is lecognized it includes the firemen. 

There is one organization, that of street railway employees,, 
for which comparisons between private and public employment can- 
not be made in the Uaited States, since there are no municipal 
undertakings of that character. The British organization, which 
nominally includes teamsters and drivers as well as motormen and 
conductors, is practically confined to the latter, and for the last six 
years has increased its membership solely among motormen and 
conductors. Its membership consists of 9,500 in municipal em- 
ployment and 1,500 in private employment,'* a ratio of one-half of 
the motormen and conductors employed by all municipalities and. 
one-third of those employed by all companies. The three private 
companies investigated, namely London, Xorwich and Dublin, have 
taken a decided stand against the organization, have discharged 
those of its employees who became members and have required bonds 
or deposits which are forfeited if the men quit without giving one 
or two weeks' notice. Two of the municipalities, London and Man- 
chester, are organized in this association to the extent of nine- 
tenths of their employees, while in two other establishments investi- 
gated, Liverpool and Glasgow, the municipalities have established 
benefit associations, and in Liverpool the union was disrupted by 
embezzlement on the part of its oflBcers. The wages are so much 
in advance of what these employees received from the former pri- 
vate companies that the union does not appear to ofier them any 
particular advantages if they should join it. In the United States, 
Avhere the street railway employees are all in the service of private 
companies, the membership of the union paying dues throughout the 
country was 36,000 in 1902 out of a total number of employees 
eligible to membership in that year of 134,000." This was 2T per 
cent, of the employees of those companies, or something less than 
the proportion organized in the private companies of Great Britain 
and about half of the proportion which the British union has of the 
municipal employees. 

In none of the American enterprises investigated were the com- 
mon laborers organized. In the municipal undertakings they are 
paid higher wages and given shorter hours than in the case of private 
employees of the same locality. They are also in all cases citizens of 
the L^nited States, and residents of the locality. The common labor 
of the private companies, except in Indianapolis and the Southern 
citits, where they are colored, is composed largely of immigrants 
and no attention is paid as to whether they have secured citizenship 
papers or not. 

MINIMUM WAGES. 

In the matter of wages and hours the principal effect of munici- 
pal ownership is seen in 'he unskilled and tmorganized labor in both 



LABOR AND POLITICS. 107 

countries, in that of street railway employees in Great Britain and 
in that of gas workers and electric workers in the United States. 

The policy of all of the British municipalities is to place the 
minimum wages of common labor at the level paid by the best 
private employers for similar work/" This is about 15 per cent, to 
40 per cent, higher than dther private wages for the same class of 
labor in the same locality. The greatest difference, that of Leicester, 
was the result of arbitration, brought about through the organiza- 
tion of common labor in that town. In this case those private em- 
ployers who recognized the union paid the same wages as the munici- 
pality. In one locality, Sheffield, the minimum wage paid by the 
gas company is higher than the minimum paid by the municipality 
and other private employers, and the gas company at Newcastle pays 
its organized common labor the same minimum as the municipality,, 
but all of the electric and tramway companies pay less for common 
labor doing the same kind of work than the municipalities in which, 
they are located." 

In the United States the minimum paid for common labor by 
the private companies is, in all cases, except Atlanta, lower than that 
of the municipality, and the minimum paid for common labor by 
municipal undertakings is higher than that of private companies 
of the same locality.'* The correspondence runs as follows : Syracuse,, 
municipal $1.50 for eight hours, private $1.50 for ten hours; De- 
troit, municipal $1.75 for eight hours, private $1.80 for nine hours; 
Allegheny, municipal $2.75 for eight hours, private $1.75 for ten 
hours; Wheeling, municipal $1.85 for eight and nine hours, private 
$1.85 for ten hours; Cleveland, municipal $1.76 for eight hours, 
private $1.75 for ten hours; Indianapolis, municipal $1.60 for eight 
hours, private $1.50 for ten hours; Chicago, municipal $2.00 for 
eight hours, private $1.75 for ten hours; New Haven, municipal 
$1.50 for eight hours, private $1.50 for nine hours; Richmond,, 
municipal $2.00 for nine hours, private $1.20 for nine hours; At- 
lanta, municipal and private $1.00 for ten hours. 

These are the minimum rates and not the average rates nor 
the highest rates paid for unskilled and usually unorganized labor.*' 
In this respect the municipalities, both in Great Britain and the 
United States, have adopted the trade-union principle of the mini- 
mum wage for that class of labor which ordinarily has no union, 
and all of the familiar arguments for and against the theory of the 
minimum wage as applied to trade unions can be brought forward 
as applied to the municipalities. Against the minimum wage theory 
is the criticism that it shuts out from employment the old men who 
are not worth the minimum wage, and my colleague, though speak- 
ing ostensibly for the trade unions, nevertheless by condemning this- 
result in municipal employment, condemns the fundamental princi- 
ple of trade-unionism. The private companies investigated, which 
pay less than the minimum, of course, justify it on the ground that, 
the Italians, negroes, and others employed are not worth the mini- 
mum, but the trade unionist usually tells them that by paying the 
minimum they would attract better workmen. So far as our in- 



108 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION*. 

I 

Testigations have gone, tl^.ey show that in municipal employment 
this lias heen the ease. Since the adoption of the minimum wage 
policy j*^ enforced sometimes by civil service rules, the quality, char- 
acter, physique, and efficiency of the common labor employed by 
municipalities has been greatly improved, and municipal employ- 
ment has ceased to be looked upon as an old-age pension for laborers 
worn out in private employment. This is a hardship to individuals 
to the same extent that trade-unionism is a hardship to individuals. 
But from the standpoint of the municipality it is a gain, because 
more competent laborers are employed, and municipal employment 
is clearly distinguished from municipal charity. The aged and 
inefficient laborers, discharged from private employment, and un- 
able to secure municipal employment, must, of course, be supported 
from the public treasury, and it is a significant fact that the move- 
ment for old-age pensions as a substitute for the poorhouse in Great 
Britain has been strengthened by the minimum wage policy of the 
past ten years which has relieved municipal employment of its poor- 
liouse features. 

In all of the occupations where organized labor was found, the 
policy of all of the municipalities investigated, except South N'or- 
walk, is that of paying the trade-union rate. This is also, of course, 
a minimum rate and the conditions are the same as those governing 
private employers of the locality who recognize the imion. A few 
cases of individuals were found where the city was paying indi- 
viduals less than the unions, but these were cases in which the union 
liad granted a permit to work below the scale on account of old age, 
or were cases over which a dispute as to the character of the work 
was in process of adjustment, or where, as in Chicago, wages in pri- 
vate employment had been advanced after the municipal budget had 
been voted and the latter could not under the law be changed until 
the next fiscal year. We have not found any instance, except that of 
the Municipal Emplo3:ees' Association in Great Britain, above men- 
tioned, where the unions have demanded higher minimum wages of 
the municipality than those paid by union employers. Individuals, 
hoth in municipal and private undertakings, get higher wages than 
the union minimum. 

Outside the ranks of unskilled labor in Great Britain the prin- 
cipal difi'erence between wages in municipal and private undertak- 
ings is found in the case of the motormen and conductors on tram.- 
ways. This has been l)rought about by a reduction in the hours of 
labor in municipal employment, so that in two municipal under- 
takings, Glasgow and Manchester, the hours have been reduced to 
54 per week, and in two others, the Liverpool and London County 
Council, to 60 per week, while in the three private undertakings the 
hours are 70 per week."' Since the wages have not been decreased 
the result is seen in the rate of pay per hour. Taking the London 
County Council Tramways and the London Ignited Tramways, 
where comparisons can fairly be made, since both are in the same 
town, the wages for motormen are 4.2 per cent, and for conductors 
?)0 per cent, higher on the municipal than on the private svstem. 



LABOR AND POLITICS. lOO 

Outside London, considering the local levels of wages, the municipal 
undertakings pay higher wages than the private undertakings. This 
difi'erence is not owing to the change from horse to electrical trac- 
tion, since the wages on the municipal undertakings were advanced 
when the municipality secured possession, which in the case of Glas- 
gow was six years before electrical traction was adopted. The pri- 
vate companies, although paying less than the municipalities, have 
also advanced their rates of pay with the introduction of electrical 
traction. The same is true of the traction companies in the United 
States, although our investigations have not included a survey of 
these companies, and we are unable to make"^ a statistical com- 
parison.* 

In the case of gas workers employed by the municipalities and 
private companies in Great Britain it has been found that, with the 
exception of the South Metropolitan Company, there is not much 
difference between the wages paid in the two classes of undertakings. 
The differences observed in this occupation grow out of the amount 
of work required of the stokers. On account of the severity of the 
work it is the practice both of the private companies and the munici- 

*The practice of my colleague in going outside the matters actually 
investigated by us and introducing criticisms that we have not in- 
vestigated may be judged by his quotation from a socialist critic of 
the Glasgow tramways — a class of critics whom in general he loses no 
opportunity to discredit. Since these criticisms have been introduced 
after our report was handed in, I have had no opportunity of "running 
them down," as was thoroughly done in other cases, and can only quote 
from a reply to my inquiries received from the General Manager under 
date of May 20, 1907. He says: "In regard to the first point, we never 
ask an applicant for a situation for a written 'character'; we simply 
wish to know from him what situations he has been in during the past 
five years, and the names of his employers during that period. On 
leaving the service he is informed that any communications regarding 
him will be promptly attended to." 

"The question of conductors paying the full value for lost tickets 
is fully dealt with in the report sent you." The report referred to is 
one made under date of February 20, 1907, by the General Manager to 
the Tramways Committee, in answering a petition of the Municipal 
Employees' Association, and includes the following paragraph: "The 
conductors desire that when any of the tickets entrusted to them go 
astray, they should only be held responsible for the cost of printing 
the lost tickets and not for their face value. I cannot find that any 
conductor during the past year has been charged the face value of lost 
tickets who has come forward with an explanation. We must, however 
be very strict in the matter of lost tickets because these tickets are 
worth their face value both to the department and to the conductors 
They must therefore be regarded practically as cash. Each case is 
considered on its merits, and I am perfectly satisfied that the conductors 
have nothmg to complain of in the way they are treated in regard to 
lost tickets." 

The General Manager continues: "I never heard it suggested that 
in our service men are supposed to report each other for neglect of 

"In regard to the wearing of uniform, we would not allow a man 
to take up duty unless he were properly dressed " 
offence^" Punching of a ticket in the wrong place is a very serious 



110 NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION. 

pal undertakings in the United States to require the stokers to work 
actually only one-half of the number of hours for which they are 
paid, the other half being available for recreation. This is true also 
in three of the municipal undertakings in Great Britain, while in 
the fourth, Glasgow, the stokers work five hours out of the eight 
instead of four. In this respect Glasgow is on the same basis with 
the most favorable of the private companies, Newcastle,. where on 
account of the presence of a strong labor organization, the stokers 
also are on the basis of five hours' work for eight hours' pay. In 
the other two private companies, which have succeeded in destroy- 
ing the labor organizations*^ that formerly existed, the amount of 
work required of the men has been increased to a greater degree than 
the increase of wages. So severe was this hardship on the employees 
of the South Metropolitan Company that in two of the stations they 
voted to accept the proposition of the company to return to the 
twelve-hour day and to forego the advantages of the eight-hour day, 
which they had secured ihrough their union in 1889. By increasing 
slightly the total amount of work in the twelve-hour shift they in- 
creased their total daily wages, but the cost of labor to the company 
is the same on the twelve-hour basis as it is in the other stations on 
the eight-hour basis. Measuring their wages, however, by the hour, 
the men on the twelve-hour basis receive the lowest rates of pay of 
all the private and municipal undertakings. This twelve-hour sys- 
tem, resulting from the smashing of the union and the overwork of 
the employees, is approved in some quarters as a "genuine example 
of co-operation." 

At the other extreme the least amount of work required of 
stokers is in the municipal undertaking at Manchester, and there 
the reduction in the amount of work has been criticised as indi- 
cating a detrimental influence of trade unions upon the municipal 
undertaking. A question of this kind must be decided according 
to the opinions of the investigators. Looking at the severity of the 
work it would be unwarranted to say that the stokers in the Man- 
chester municipal undertaking are doing a smaller amount of work 
than should be fairly required of them. An important consequence 
of the policy of the Manchester municipality in its effort to avoid 
overworking the stokers is seen in its effort to greatly improve the 
equipment of the plant in order to reduce the amount of labor re- 
quired, the net result being that the labor cost in Manchester is not 
greater than in other places. 

In the United States the gas workers are on the twelve-hour 
day at Eichmond and Atlanta, but in the municipal plant at Wheel- 
ing all employees have the eight-hour day, while with the private 
company at Philadelphia the shift men in the retort house were 
placed on the eight-hour day when the company took possession. 
They had worked twelve hours under municipal ownership. The 
wages paid by the Eichmond municipal plant, all of whose em- 
ployees are whites, are 90 per cent, to 100 per cent, higher than the 
wages paid to negroes who do similar work in the Atlanta private 
undertaking, and the wages paid to white mechanics and appren- 
tices at Eichmond are 30 per cent, to 120 per cent, higher than 
those paid to the corresponding white employees by the Atlanta 



LxVBOU AND POLITICS. Ill 

<;onipany.'"' In one occupation, that of the bricklayer, the wages in 
the two places are the same. 

In the electric industries in Great Britain, outside of employ- 
ment of unskilled labor, there does not appear to be any material 
difference in the rates paid by the municipalities and the private 
companies taken as a whole. It was not possible to make an exact 
comparison on account of the differences in classification and 
the wide range of wages, depending partly upon the size of th<e 
undertaking.^' Such differences as were found to exist between 
municipal and private undertakings might be explained upon the 
basis of the differences in the level of wages in the several localities. 

In the United States in all cases, except South Norwalk and 
Detroit, the wages paid by the municipal electric undertakings are 
materially higher than these paid by the private undertakings of 
the same localities. The widest diiference is found in Allegheny 
^nd in Chicago. The only positions in which the private electrical 
companies of Chicago pay as high wages for similar work as the 
municipal undertaking is that of a small number of their wiremen, 
who work alongside the other organized building trades of the city."* 
Their other wiremen doing the same work get less pay. 

In the matter of "welfare work," or provision for the comfort, 
cleanliness and recreation of employees, the best conditions were 
found in the works of the Commonwealth Electric Company at 
Chicago,^^ the municipal water works at Cleveland, the Philadelphia 
gas works, the municipal gas at Leicester, municipal trams at Glas- 
gow and Liverpool and South Metropolitan gas at London. The 
worst conditions were at Wheeling and Eichmond municipal gas 
and Sheffield private gas. In general, the buildings and works con- 
structed during the past four or five years, both in private and mu- 
nicipal undertakings, show" a great improvement over the older build- 
ings and works, in the provision for baths, lavatories, lunch and 
cooking rooms, recreation rooms and grounds- Taking the entire 
list of properties visited, the best under one form of ownership i? 
equalled by the best under the other form, and so on down to the 
worst. The superior character of the municipal undertakings over 
private undertakings in Great Britain is partly owing to their more 
recent construction, and the converse is true in the United States. 

In Great Britain,"* but not in the United States, were found 
systems of insurance, thrift funds, sick, death and accident benefits, 
both in municipal and private undertakings. The most extensi/e 
and elaborate of these is that of the South Metropolitan Company, 
connected with its system of profit sharing and compulsory invest- 
ment of profits in the company's stocks. This system is ingeniously 
contrived to destroy the gas workers' union by subjecting its em- 
ployees to the conspiracy l?ws,"' and to enable the company to "con- 
tract out" from the Workmen's Compensation laws. The munici- 
pal gas works of Glasgow has copied the system so far as it relates 
to profit sharing and conspiracy, but not to workmen's compensa- 
tion. All other municipal and private establishments pay accident 
benefits as required by this national legislation. 



ANALYSIS 
OF INVESTIGATOR COMMONS' "LABOR AND POLITICS." 

By J. W. SULUVAN. 

See refereuce numbers in the review referred to, page 88. 

1. The '^sentences" "picked out" here referred to (quoted in 
the begining of my review, page 60), are paragraphs indited bj' 
Investigator Commons, after I had demonstrated to him their truth. 
Summaries of a series of inquiries, they conceded that in Great 
Britain municipalization had not improved wages and conditions 
in general for employees in the skilled occupations organized as 
trade unions, but had slightly done so for the unskilled workers of 
a grade higher than the average in the labor market, aided by the 
political pressure coming from the Municipal Emplo3^ees' Associa- 
tion and kindred political organizations and the social bodies de- 
manding the "living wage." By this "picking out" of passages I 
gave a satisfactory reply to one of the first questions repeatedly 
asked me in America among workingmen: "Have municipalized 
gas works, street railwaj^s, etc., really done so much in England for 
the hands as is talked about in America by municipal ownership 
advocates?" If my colleague, in the comprehensive statements of 
these paragraphs, gave away a large part of his case, diminishing 
thenceforth the interest of American wage-earners in his municipal 
cornucopia, he should have foreseen the result. And if he himself 
proceeded to show that "municipal employees sooner or later cast 
their votes for candidates who promise or who have secured a better- 
ment of their conditions" (page 97), he merely fortified my argu- 
ment that so-called trade unions of municipal employees are mainly 
political, and hence repugnant to the established economic and non- 
political principles of unionism. These sweeping admissions by 
Investigator Commons given at the outset, I disposed of what to 
many inquirers is a good part of the municipal ownership question. 
It was indeed impossible for him to pick out from our joint report 
any passages equally damaging to private operation. Municipal 
ownership, after fair trial, had, as its most striking outcome in re- 
gard to labor, substituted a narrow field of employment in a bu- 
reaucracy where changes in conditions were mostly subject to politi- 
cal methods, for the broad field in free industry open to all grades 
of labor, where conditions might be improved for all alike through 
the collective self-help of trade unionism and the individual self- 
help of personal efficiency. 

2. A claim that withers under examination. To write that 
sentence while totally ignoring the lessons he learned at the Phila- 
delphia gas works, to cite but one example, required effrontery. 

3. The principle prevalent in the wonderful development of 
the United States has been that it is essential to the rate of prog- 
ress to have work done e\en with waste. The ruling idea in Great 
Britain has been official supervision to the point of suppression in 
order to protect vested rights or, in the case of cities, to hold back 
"public utility" developments for municipal operation. The com- 
bined results of municipal ownership and governmental interfei'- 
ence in Great Britain with the tramway and electrical industries 



ANALYSIS OF INVESTKiATOU C0M:M0NS' REVIEW. lliJ 

have rendered the kingdom one of the most^backward countries irt 
those regards in the world. In both industries it is far behind 
Italy. If the ratio of the supply in the United Kingdom were 
equal to that in the United States, a competent observer made oul 
two years ago that there would be 1,256 places supplied with electric 
lighting instead of its 457 ; 14,000 miles of electric railway instead 
of its 3,040, and 50,000 persons employed in the telephone industry 
instead of its 13,000. 

4. Until within a few years American municipalities, unheed- 
ful of the exact cost, were inviting capital to come and take fran- 
chises and help develop. And before and since, the energies of the 
people, press, and prosecution have been expended in exposing the 
blunders of the inefficient, and the jobbery, sinecurism, and malad- 
ministration of the rascally, officeholders. 

5. "The purest of indefinite nonsense," was the comment on 
this passage by a gas company President who last year travelled in 
Oreat Britain to observe for himself. 

6. Not correct. Th(i American companies were not asked 
for this permission. The only American management that refused 
access to our engineers and accountants was that of the Eichmond 
municipal gas. Already, by the law, in Great Britain, public ser- 
vice companies furnish to the government Board of Trade such 
statistics. In the United States similar information given to pri- 
vate investigation might be used in the stock market. 

7. A complicated question. Municipal ownership agitators 
and political "sandbaggers" have held this threat over the British 
companies. On the other hand, municipalities have had strikes. 

8. None of the anti-municipal members of our Commission 
opposed a system of uniform public accounting. The British com- 
panies, like the municipalities, must make returns to the govern- 
ment. This has nothing to do in heading off strikes. 

9. One set of vices may in cases have to an extent been avoid- 
ed. But such vices play no essential part in private operation, since 
in many other cases they have been eliminated, or had, because of 
just municipal control, never developed. But municipal ownership 
has invariably engendered its own peculiar and ineffaceable vices, 
dangerous to society in proportion to the number of employees. 

Investigator Commons' opening paragraph is a model of ran- 
dom inaccuracies and misty conclusions. 

10. It would have been well for his cause had he been able to 
exalt municipal ownership^ as much after this investigaton as was 
his habit before I went with him to witness its marvels and we 
were shown its shams. 

11. For each municipality to have "full power and home 
rule" to change from private to public ownership in gas, transit, 
water, and electricity would in many cases be but a violation of 
home rule. The water supply of a dozen municipalities in Union, 
Hudson and Essex Counties in New Jersey is in a single system. 
So to an extent are- the gas, trolley, and electricity supplies in these 
and other counties. To i>ermit a single municipality to secede at 
will from such a system once formed would be to set at naught a 
contract with the other mimicipalities and open the way for local 
political machines to blackmail the trunk undertakings already 
giving the supplies. Again, London's boroughs have learned a sad 



114 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

lesson in so-called home rule in electricity. A single central elec- 
tric system for the Metropolitan district could cut the price by a 
good percentage, but what would then become of the borough sys- 
tems? By true home rule all the people directly concerned, and 
not a fraction of them, settle their common public questions under 
principles establislied by the State. The English Socialists have 
abandoned municipal home rule for tramways, water, and elec- 
tricity, and now call for ^^'municipalization by provinces.*' 

12. Aye; government is simply a question of politics, whether 
in Russia or Switzerland. In this paragraph Investigator Com- 
mons confuses unlike ideas in one term, a mental defect of which 
he is often the victim. But in the last clause — "we only get a 
different kind of politics" — he nearly sees through his fog. Munic- 
ipal ownership gives us politics perpetual, in e^'ery aspect, at each 
step, from the initiation of a service to its separate extensions and 
down to the last point in the details of its administration — a long 
chain of politics, no stronger than its weakest link. Through opera- 
tion by contract, a well governed mimicipality may have politics 
focussed on one transaction and thenceforth attenuated to the van- 
ishing point. The communities so feeble in public virtue that they 
cannot protect themselves by stipulating a fair franchise and an 
honest supervision of service would under municipal operation stand 
little chance of "getting and keeping the right kind of men to man- 
age and operate the municipal imdertakings."' 

13. Competition regulates all honestly awarded contract work 
for municipalities, even in the common so-called monopolistic sup- 
plies requiring forms of exclusive possession of the streets. 

14. Xot correct. This entire passage is disproven by the de- 
nial from these associations that any such "'indorsement'" was ever 
made. See page 9. 

15. With my review in his hands ten weeks before the Twent;/- 
One met, June 10, 190T. my colleague had had abimdant time for 
conciliatory representations when he so reluctantly penned this 
painful explanation. Xeedless and untruthful, it betrays his judg- 
ment overcome by resentment at reading my digest of our evidence 
against municipal ownerslup. "When unable to answer, abuse your 
opponent !*' 

16. Xot correct. This astonishing falsehood is fully exposed 
pages 3 to 8. 

IT. After he reads the numerous corrections in the essentials 
of his testimony I have p-ut on record against him in these pages, 
and sees how many qualified men have come forward to disprove 
his assertions, he will have reason to see the futility- of parading his 
positiveness and rectitude. 

18. This paragraph takes a place in the same category as his 
description of the Sheffield and Xewcastle Town Councils. In 
neither case did his allegations relate to a matter of prescribed in- 
vestigation by our Commission. He was careful to carry on this 
"thoroughness of investigation" without my knowledge and con- 
trary to instructions. 

19. Then to persist in not seeing that the cleansing of our 
municipal politics first is indispensable to any success in municipal 
operation is wilful blindness. He was not commissioned to go forth 
seeking all the remote facts that in his judgment or at his needs 



ANALYSIS OF INVESTIGATOR COMMONS' REVIEW. 115 

would help his argument, but he was working under instructions to 
investigate certain undertakings with me. 

20. "It was found." By whom ? By himself, from unnamed 
sources at Syracuse and Allegheny. As to Chicago and Philadel- 
phia, see statements on the point^ Part II, Vol. I, pages 142 and 
520, and note the flimsy bases for these serious charges. 

21. In this paragraph, whether right or not as to political ap- 
pointments in the two forms of undertakings, he admits the under- 
lying causes of dry rot in the trade unions composed wholly or in 
part of municipal employees. It is a paragraph to be studied by 
trade unionists. 

22. The civil service of Mayor Dunne's administration does 
not stand so high in public estimation in 1908 as it did in munic- 
ipal ownership circles in 1906. 

23. "Are found." By whom? Where is the evidence? In 
this paragraph and the one ensuing he is sole witness and self-ap- 
pointed judge. Under the rules laid down by the Commission his 
proceeding was irregular. His assertion as to the "accident" of his 
personal acquaintance is a bit of playfulness, meant for the credu- 
lous. The last seven lines of the second paragraph were slipped 
in after his review had been sent to the Committee of Twenty-One. 

24. "Definite information was obtained." By whom? From 
whom ? What can be done to hold a supposedly scientific observer 
down to well-authenticated fact when he indulges in a series of 
loose allegations such as these? 

25. Not correct. I attended, w^hile on my tours for this Com- 
mission, meetings of four Councils — those of Eichmond, Chicago, 
Glasgow, and London — and made on the spot inquiries as to the 
standing of the men who took the floor. I do not know^ that my 
colleague attended any such meetings. Surface indications did 
not rate the two American Councils low. The members of the 
Eichmond Council were in appearance of a fine type of Southerii 
citizenship, orderly in debate and business-like in dispatching their 
work. There was no symptom of partisanship, buncombe, or "re- 
form" hoodwinking. The Chicago Council's striking features w^ere 
democratic informality, directness and speediness, with a good-hu- 
mored snuffing out of political play. The Glasgow Council's session 
was enlivened, as I have said, by charges and counter-charges from 
heated partisans, talk for the galleries, and tit-for-tat taunts and 
gibes. Notable elements, as pointed out to me, were the loiown de- 
fenders of the liquor interests, one or two non-working Laborites, 
several red-flag Socialists, many sanguine municipalists, and not a 
few small politician dummies. The London County Council's several 
sessions I attended were largely occupied with disputed questions 
regarding the financial outcome of acquired or projected lodging 
houses, tramways, steam])oats, etc. The Moderates foretold their 
day that was coming and in parliamentary language plainly doubted 
the accuracy of the Progressives' reports. In the many talks over 
the character of Councilmen which I heard in various cities, it 
seemed human nature to exhibit generosity in the judgment of 
fellow-partisans and hardness of heart toward opponents. Of course, 
the true character of a Councilman can only be revealed in a series 
of votes that tests his integrit}-, intelligence, consistency and devo- 
tion to the community above self or party. 



116 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

26. A statement little likely to promote immediate munici- 
palization in America. Have the mmiicipal ownership leaders 
given this admission its just weight? 

27. Xot correct. In Scotland, by Councils; in England, by 
licensing magistrates, except for places of amusement. 

28. Xot correct. All the Labor Party men do not call them- 
selves Socialists. 

29. Xot correct. Fai from it. Mr. Dalrymple, tramway.-, 
Glasgow, is the solitary well-known instance, according to the in- 
formation given me by Englishmen to whom I showed this state- 
ment in April, 1908. 

30. Another admission fatal in the American mind to munic- 
ipalization. On considering it, workmen in private employment 
might consequently assume an attitude of opposition to municipal 
ownership. 

31. The swinging from one party to another, or from one 
candidate to another, of one vote in twenty — 50 in 1,000 — would 
have affected the result in enough Presidential elections to com- 
pletely change the history of the United States; a transfer of one 
vote in fourteen w^ould at some time have altered important local 
policies in every subdivision of every State. But municipal and 
government employees alwaj^s vote ; they live in and on politics, and 
bring out their friends on election day. The twenty to forty per 
cent of registered voters not voting are mostly those having no per- 
sonal stake in the result. One-fourteenth of the registered voters 
may represent one-eighth of the actual voters, and with men they 
influence one-sixth. 

32. Xot correct. For the errors in this paragraph see page 
11. Evidence is not wholly lacking in the United States that cer- 
tain local unions are run considerably for the benefit of their mem- 
bers in municipal or government employ. 

33. 'No better arrangement precedent to any necessary form 
of municipal oTMiership, such as the water supply or markets, has 
come under the Commission's observation than having the head 
of a department wholly independent of politics, where possible ; but 
as to whether this system is firmly established in Cleveland one will 
be able to form a sound judgment only after several changes of ad- 
ministration ; in Detroit, the headship of the electricity depart- 
ment is difficult to locate — in the Superintendent, Secretary or 
Commission. 

34. Sheffield tramways were not investigated. Investigator 
Commons once gave me this information as coming from a street 
car conductor with whom he had a casual chat while on his car ! 

35. Unsupported statements. Testimony from members of 
the Labor and Socialist parties, the Municipal Employees' Associa- 
tion, the Citizens' Union, and the heads of the municipalized de- 
partments themselves, some of which I have elsewhere given, is to 
the effect that Councillors continually "give lines" to workmen seek- 
ing employment. Will a municipal undertaking manager steadily 
ignore the recommendations given their henchmen by the Council- 
lors who hold his own situation in their hands? 

36. "Thorough investigation" of a day or two. This oft-used 
phrase loses its force when the reader knows that we had not the 
time in our investigation to go exhaustively into such points, which 
might well take a special commission months. 



ANALYSIS OF INVESTIGATOR COMMONS' REVIEW. 117 

37. This is not "organized labor" in the trade union sense, 
but organizations of municpal employees for mutual benefit and 
political ends. The Secretaries inevitably are tempted to become 
vote bargainers with Councillors and municipal managers. 

38. "Influence" in tiiese circumstances passes from the Coun- 
cillors to the organization, i. e., the Secretary, who, wielding the 
boycott vote club, gets work for its members, sees that they are not 
easily discharged, and with other secretaries advocates more munic- 
ipalization. 

39. Some of these interests, in powerful form, are usually 
with the machine in America, ready to assist it in swallowing new 
municipal undertakings. ]n London, the Socialists have a model 
machine; and few seats in the County Council are held indepen- 
dently of a party organization. In the situation in London to-day 
big companies fighting loc their existence — a very large stake — do 
what they can to prevent Socialist and Progressive majorities from 
holding power and virtually confiscating their property, either by 
compulsory sale or burdensome taxation. In boroughs in the East 
p]nd of London, where local taxation has reached 8 and even 12 
shillings (and the Socialist cry is "Rates, twenty shillings to the 
pound !") manufacturing is heavily handicapped in competition with 
enterprises in the provinces near London where rates are but 2 
shillings. London capitalists have hence been forced into forming 
a political machine to protect their industries, and in the recent 
elections their workmen have stood by them. In his remarks on 
the brewery interest. Thorough Investigator Commons finds himself 
still floundering in his ridiculous blunder of making Councils in 
England (the London County Council, for example) license the sa- 
loons. They have nothing to do with licensing, except places of en- 
tertainment, such as music halls, which have but an infinitesimal 
part of the retail beer business. 

It would be difficult to cram more errors of fact and comment 
into an equal number of lines than has Investigator Commons in 
this description of what Americans call "local politics" in Great 
Britain. He is seeing London through Milwaukee eyes. 

4:0. How is it, then, that wageworkers are invariably found 
ready to become active in trade unions, thus risking their bread and 
butter? One good reason for the absence of large business men 
from British Town Councils is that they cannot spare two to four 
days a week following the details of municipalized undertakings. 
But the small business man, leaving his wife or a clerk in charge 
of the shop, has the amateur's liking for running gas works and 
street cars, with public funds, and acting prominent citizen at 
public dinners or on excursions to other towns, or even to the Con- 
tinent, expenses paid. 

4:1. There are no "enormous profits" for either political party 
in Philadelphia in the gas works of that city to-day, nor can there 
be for twenty years. In the hands of an operating company, on 
terms satisfactory to the community, these works do not form one 
of the prizes in politics that they did when owned and operated by 
the city. Taking these works as an example, American municipal- 
ities could abolish the situation depicted by Investigator Commons, 
a fact he has been throughout careful to avoid recognizing. 

42. ^ot a few of the trade unions in Great Britain are to-day 
undermined by the extent to which political municipalism and par- 



118 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

lianientarism lias been substituted for trade unionism. As was the 
case in San Francisco, political unionists, elbowing aside trade- 
union unionists, are threatening the independence of the union 
man's vote if he talks about supporting what party he pleases; are 
trying to run the labor machines that return Councillors and Mem- 
bers of Parliament. 

43- Xot correct. See page 15. 

44. Not correct. There have been strikes of the stokers at 
the three private works here alluded to. The Sheffield company 
makes no concealment of its preparedness for a strike, if incited 
from the outside, though one would be folly considering the good 
wages of the men. The Newcastle company's men are at present in 
a very poor state of organization. The incorrectness of Investi- 
gator Commons' reference to the South Metropolitan Company is 
fully exposed, page 21. Sir Frederick Mappin has certainly illus- 
trated to the Avorld the superiority of the situation at the Sheffield 
gas works to any situation possible under municipal ownership. 
The wages rate has stood as a model in a dispute at a neighboring 
municipal undertaking, the price of gas is the lowest in the king- 
dom, and in all respects the terms with the customers and the mu- 
nicipality are exemplary. 

45. "Reform" with "the knife." 

46. Aside from the section in the building trades, where the 
factors of organization are special, and in the Department of Elec- 
tricity, the Chicago electric workers' union is weak. The interests 
of the men in that occupation in the city are not integral^ as they 
must be in a union to be successful. They can only be so when the 
conditions of employment in the city department are the same as in 
private industry. 

47. For "unions" lead "organizations of municipal em- 
ployees." The Manchester tramway men's organization is now in 
large part merged in the Municipal Employees' Association, accord- 
ing to the latter's General Secretary. 

48. In Chicago, committees of various unions wait on the 
Council appropriations committees, not on the water department 
chiefs. In Cleveland, the Central Labor Union's committees, and 
not a laborers' union committee, consult with the water Superin- 
tendent. In both cases, the higgling of the labor market may be 
affected by the propinquity of the vote market. In Detroit, a pe- 
tition of the Electricity Commission's hands for a raise in wages 
brought, not a committee consultation, but the issue of letters from 
the office to twenty cities to ascertain prevailing rates. 

49. The joint report, page 156, says of Indianapolis just the 
contrary : "The question of a man's politics never counts in mak- 
ing appointments." In the three municipalized cities mentioned, 
the attitude of the managers investigated was indifference to all in- 
stitutions or individuals not backed by a pull. 

50. Not correct. The private undertakings of New Haven, 
Indianapolis, and Atlanta had had no labor troubles. And not a 
single word of testimony was obtained to show that the Philadel- 
phia gas company ever had the least difficulty with any imion; its 
labor conditions were above the criticisms of union officials. In 
Chicago, the peculiar conditions of the union situation, just noted, 
resulting in a lack of the necessary study by union officials of how 



ANALYSIS OF INVESTIGATOR COMMONS' REVIEW. 119^ 

iho companies' workmen might be organized, was most probably the 
obstacle. On the other hand, the Detroit municipal electric works 
had beaten the union in a strike and employed non-unionists; and 
little Norwalk's municipal works had been made — like the Vatican 
— "extra territorial" by the union, and not interfered with. In- 
vestigator Commons' use of the word "hostile" requires his own 
definition. His fabrications here plainly were written for quotation 
by his deluded supporters. 

51. Xow defunct. The Municipal Employees' Association 
takes in the unskilled electric workers, but prefers that tlie skilled 
go into the engineers. 

52. The President of the International Brotherhood of Sta- 
tionary Firemen says he finds less difficulty in organizing the em- 
ployees of municipal, state, and Federal buildings in New York, o£ 
whom there are many hundreds, than the employees of private es- 
tablishments. Public officials are approachable — in October. 

53. The crookedness of this statement as made is apparent 
when the reader knows that there was no branch of this union found 
in New Haven, Atlanta, or Indianapolis ; hence no members in the 
private undertakings in these places. In Philadelphia, the union's 
business agent said that the gas company's wages were above th.3 
union scale and more than at the city's water works. 

The presence of members of the stationary engineers' and fire- 
men's unions in the municipal works is a fact complimentary to the 
shrewdness of the union officials, whose business it is to see that city 
jobs go to their organizations. A matter of little account on a 
small scale, to be regarded by citizens with an indifferent benevo- 
lence, this might be the beginning of a municipal ownership canker, 
were there numerous employees of many trades in various municipal 
undertakings. 

54. It is almost exclusively a form of municipal employees' 
association. 

55. Until 1892 the American street railway men were unor- 
ganized or badly organized. The number of members, while fluctu- 
ating year by 3'ear, rises considerably by five-year stages. Why did 
Investigator Commons go so far back as 1902, with its 36,000 mem- 
bers (as he alleges) ? The President of the Amalgamated Associa- 
tion of Street Eailway Employees writes me that in 1907 the or- 
ganization had 300 unions, with more than 70,000 members, and 
that this year it has 80,000. 

56. I deal somewh-at with this fallacious presentation of the 
"minimum w^age'^ idea in my review% page 61. Observe the possi- 
ble deception in the percentage of differences if the reader overlooks 
exactly what Investigator Commons tries to compare. The "mini- 
mum" given for the municipality is the rate for a force of qualified 
men established through influences not operative in private employ 
— the insistence of united municipal employees, the yielding nature 
of Councillors Jiandling other men's money, the crusade for "a living 
wage." The minimum quoted here for private employ is the rate 
paid the poorest grade of labor by employers not particularized and 
not among those investigated by our Commission. Where the skilled 
union scale was recognized in private employ, the municipal rates 
were paid. "Minimum wage" here attempts in vain a mathematical 
comparison of ratios relating to different classifications of labor. 



120 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

Tlie phrase, an echo of learned nonsense, counts for nothing except 
in political campaign consumption. 

57. Xot correct. I have (page 15) given the testimony of the 
Newcastle Gas Company's chief engineer that it pays better wagCo 
to common labor than the city. The big Newcastle electric com- 
pany pays within a shade the same as the gas company. The Dublin 
tramway company pays as high wages for engineers, firemen and 
laborers as any municipality in Ireland for similar grades of labor. 
The London IJnited Tramways Company, which is a suburban line 
having only about three miles of track in London boroughs, pays 
an allowable deduction from the urban rates of the County Council, 
just as Brookl}Ti's union wages are lower than Manhattan's, even 
in skilled organized trades. An ex-employee of the L'nited Tram.- 
ways Company recently said to me that, considering the easy work 
on its lines and the constant worry and hardships on the crowded 
County Council lines, he would regard employment for the com- 
pany preferable at a decidedly lower percentage in wages. The 
Norwich tramway company ipajs its station men wages equal to the 
jnunicipality's and better tlian is paid in several neighboring towns. 
These assertions of mine are based on the information given to the 
labor investigators by company officials, and on occasions by the 
workmen when interviewed or union officials or others. The in- 
vestigators had not the exact and exhaustive data for a study of the 
shadings in the elusive question of laborers' wages, varying, as they 
do, in private emplo}', with the factors of age, physical ability, 
handiness, term of service, steadiness, etc. On the other hand, it 
seemed to me that the key to the fact that in some cases municipal- 
ities pay lower rates than private employers of the same locality 
while in others they pay much higher is found in the explainable 
further fact that in one branch of a municipal undertaking there 
are low wages, while in another there are high, as with the poorly 
paid office force and liberally paid works force at the Wheeling gas 
undertaking. Under the changing administrations of municipal- 
ities there is, as to the compensation of employees, either only the 
old established rate, which continues low so long as the employees 
concerned have no effective pull, or a liberality resultant on the 
fears or hopes of the Councillors for the employees' influence at 
election times, once the men are aroused for united effort. The 
postmen in America and Great Britain have obtained amelioration 
of slavish conditions only by ceaseless agitation after being organ- 
ized. 

oS. Not correct. The general assertion with which he opens 
this paragraph could be made by Investigator Commons only by 
omitting from the list of quotations following it mention of the 
United Gas Improvement Company of Philadelphia, which, he well 
knew, pays better wages for a shorter day than the municipal fire 
and water departments. Other misstatements: Indianapolis — 
On obtaining the figures in the text (page 15 T, Joint report) from 
the company in writing, I directed Investio'ator Commons' atten- 
tion to the lower rate given in the table drawn up by him. He 
never corrected his table, but used its incorrect figures in computing 
his comparison in this paragraph. Allegheny — Public "snap" ; not 
wages. Chicago — The exact facts are stated in the two-line footnote 
I added to Investigator Commons' table (or that of his students). 



ANALYSIS OF INVESTIGATOR COMMONS' REVIEW. 121 

page 146, joint report. The $1.75 is paid by the com])anios 
only to a limited class of its laborers — coal shovelers from cars. The 
mimicipal lighting works have not this class, who are to it incapa- 
bles, in view of civil service qualifications. Eichmond — The mu- 
nicipal gas undertaking has its street mains work done by contract 
at the "private" employment rate mentioned (table, page 500, joint 
report ) . The philanthropist white man's municipality wears negro 
sweatshop clothing. Similarly, the London County Council has 
low workmen's tramway fares for the sections of its lines within 
London, where the Councillors' constituencies live, but has over- 
looked establishing them for their suburban sections, where the 
workmen are not among their constituents. 

59. The statistics of his previous paragraph, worthless through 
their errors, become meaningless as a gauge of wage methods when 
now seen as "minimum rates and not the average rates nor the 
highest rates." The maximum rates, which run high in private em- 
ploy, he has not quoted; comparative average rates depend on a 
parity of classifications, here non-existent. While the mind of the 
honest lay inquirer is naturally upon a comparison in general be- 
tween the rates of pay by the municipalities and the companies in- 
vestigated, in reply the Investigator dwells at length on misleading 
"minimum rates" — and mis-reports them. 

By the "fundamental principle of trade unionism" a union, 
representing workingmen, establishes a scale for its members, men 
of the same trade, below which all agree not to work. The un- 
■qualified for the occupation do not become members. By its "mini- 
mum wage" for its high-grade laborers a municipality, as employer, 
establishes a blanket rate for various unskilled occupations only. 
Investigator Commons' confusion of ideas here arises from his 
habit of substituting indiscriminate general terms for several other 
terms applicable to distinguishable and even unlike facts. 

60. Ample proof of the fallacy in minimum wage compari- 
sons. 

61. The municipal tramway undertakings we investigated in 
Great Britain represented, the cream of the industry for the king- 
dom — the heart of the greatest cities, requiring in the motormen 
and conductors the highest development of physique and skill. The 
^^fair" comparison instituted by Investigator Commons between the 
County Council tramways in London and the United Company's 
lines outside London, as we have seen, has its dark shades of unfair- 
ness. 

62. Not correct. The table of scales in 1906, compared with 
the scales at the date of the organization of many of the unions fur- 
nished us by President Mahon, of the International Union, from 
his office records, and in possession of Investigator Commons when 
he wrote this paragraph, was doubtless the latest and perhaps the 
most complete statement of the kind in existence. He had half a 
year after obtaining it to submit, through his force of students, a 
proofsheet copy by mail to the officers of the 148 companies referred 
to in the table for verification of its figures, if that was necessary. 

63. Not correct. A direct contradiction of his own assertion 
of a fact, page 102, twelve lines from foot of page. The "companies 
which cannot afford to risk a strike" have risked strikes and "suc- 
ceeded in destroying the labor organizations" ! Besides, see chapter 



122 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

on South Metropolitan Gas Company, pages 16 to 23, for correc- 
tions of errors in every sentence regarding it in this paragraph. 

64. Xot correct. A contradiction of the statement in our 
joint report (page 497) : "But high wages are no longer found on 
the payrolls [at Richmond] when one passes to the grades of the 
more skilled," and also of the statement of wage increases at At- 
lanta set out in the footnote to the table on page 500. The fact, as 
usual, is that the company pays a range of wages while the muni- 
cipality pays a flat rate. 

65. The same as for tramway companies, as I have explained 
in references 57 and 61. 

66. See reference 46. 

67. To Professor Bemis, this classifying his undertaking after 
the Edison Company and before the Philadelphia Gas Company 
must have appeared as a dubious and indefensible compliment. Hi& 
bureau does not put one dollar into this channel of compensation 
to labor where either of these companies puts hundreds. For a 
possible tabular statement in parallel columns see pages 147, 149^ 
510, 513, 514, 516, joint rciport. The Edison-Commonwealth, South 
Metropolitan, and United Gas Companies' systems of welfare work 
are among the best to be found in any country. All the municipali- 
ties mentioned by Investigator Commons are in this respect in a 
much poorer class than these three companies. Not recognizing: the 
methods of outright compensation beyond wages to all the workmen 
followed by the New Haven, Atlanta, and Indianapolis companies, 
while mentioning the cheap soup-house and slum reading room 
methods of the Glasgow and Leicester municipal undertakings, from 
which the workmen generally stand aloof, is a gross violation of 
any pretence at impartiality. 

68. The obvious reason : British workingmen's benefit and in- 
surance is more frequently practised within occupational lines ; 
their trade unions in general, like the exceptional American rail- 
v»'ay brotherhoods, are in their foremost features benefit societies. 
American wage workers, with a higher level of pay and standard of 
living, take up with the whole body of citizens in insurance com- 
panies, as they do in building and loan associations. To find a 
British workman insured for $3,000 is as rare as to find one owning 
a three-thousand-dollar house. 

69. Not correct. A return to his series of misrepresentations 
regarding this company. This malicious misstatement is corrected, 
page 19. 

The footnote, page 109, is an interesting illustration of certain 
of my colleague's vicious habits as an investigator — self-contradic- 
tion, unguarded assertion, indefiniteness in expression, baseless as- 
sumption of thoroughness. 

He brings here his only specification in his charge, that going 
outside the matters actually investigated by us is my "practice." 
Persistent plodder that he is, it may be depended upon that to find 
this one apparent example he went over my review as with a fine- 
tooth comb. And actually what is my statement? That the terms 
of service table for the Glasgow tramways "gave color" to this So- 
cialist's assertions (page 76). The "Clarion's" article reaching me 
as I was about closing my review, I inserted the gist of it, having 
in mind (1) that my manuscript was to go direct to Investigator 



ANALYSIS OF INVESTIGATOR COMMONS' REVIEW. 123: 

Commons for necessary rectification between ourselves, and (2) 
that he had already, in pages 28-30 of our joint report, written as 
to the references required : "The applicant fills the schedule in his 
own handwriting, stating his name, address, age, height, weight, 
and whether married or single. He gives his references to present 
and previous employers, stating the length of service, nature of em- 
ployment, reason for leaving, and wages, and whether willing ta 
join the Department Friendly Society. These employers are then 
addressed with a ^private and confidential' blank schedule, which 
they are asked to fill in, by answering the following questions." 
Then follow questions intimately personal. "Other persons, not em- 
ployers, referred to by the applicant, are asked similar questions" 
(which are printed therewith). If the result of all this filling in 
by former employers, etc., of blanks containing numerous printed 
questions is not "a written character" it would be interesting tu 
learn what might answer the description. As to the second point 
made by the Socialist, the manager's explanation that lost tickets 
"must be regarded practically as cash" is in different words pre- 
cisely the Socialist's statement. Third point : "I never heard it sug-^ 
gested that in our service men are supposed to report each other for 
neglect of duty." The Socialist failed here to give his evidence. 
Fourth point, as to uniforms — the Socialist seems to be correct. 
Fifth, as to mispunching tickets — the Socialist is right. Sixth and 
last — In the three years referred to, ending May 31, 1906, the num- 
ber of traffic employees who left the Glasgow tramways was 1,439. 
Of these, 526 were dismissed and 913 resigned. In the seven elec- 
tricity years of the tramways, 1902-1908, the total number of men 
leaving the traffic service alone was 3,612. Of these, 1,226 were 
dismissed and 2,384 resigned. By years, the number leaving was : 
653, 589, 555, 464, 420, 471, 460; the dismissals being 194, 220. 
202, 187, 137, 127, 161 ; the resignations, 459, 369, 353, 277, 283, 
344, 299. Average per year, dismissals and resignations, 516 in a 
traffic force averaging 2,300 men. In the other branches of the 
service — the permanent way force and the car- works force — the total 
that left through dismissal or resignation in the seven years was 
5,834; the grand total of vacancies (including the 3,612 traffic 
force) is therefore 9,446. The total number of men employed in 
all the tramway branches, by years, for the seven years (ending May 
31 each year), was: 1902, 3,224; 1903, 3,306; 1904, 3,751; 1905, 
4,480; 1906, 5,100; 1907, 4,960; 1908, 4,580. The teaching of 
these various sets of amazing figures is that, in the land where fre- 
quently a job descends through generations the municipality of Glas- 
gow loses its tramway employees at c rate equaling the entire force 
every four years. The motormen and conductors go at the rate of 
all hands in each four and a half years. These facts, and the fore- 
stalling of unionizing the force through the obligatory department 
benefit society, wipe out all possibility of the street-car men of 
America clamoring for model Glasgow's municipal ownership con- 
ditions for themselves. 

Observe Investigator Commons' devious moves on this point. 
1. Instead of offering me privately the alleged corrections he ob- 
tained by writing to the Glasgow manager, he let my quotation in 
my review go in printed form to the public, that he might, a few 
pages further on, advertise that he had "run it down." 2. He- 



124 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

drew up his footnote in a form that suggested to the hasty reader 
that he was making serious corrections of the Socialist's statements, 
whireas he was actually on most counts stating confirmations. 3- 
Finally, he accounted for the apparent short terms among motor- 
men and conductors by referring to "extension of service," while the 
following circumstances indicate that he was fully cognizant of the 
true state of facts : He wrote me from Glasgow, Aug. , 2, 1906, while 
there on his second visit, to "check up" my notes, that he was 
"going thoroughly into the methods of appointment and promotion." 
He prints (page 25, Part II, Vol. II), a page of statistics relating 
to "appointments, promotions, and dismissals," but restricts his 
figures to officials having salaries of $1,000 and upward. He refers 
in the footnote we have just analyzed to the further information he 
had obtained by correspondence with the Glasgow tramways man- 
ager for the purpose of refuting my suggestion that the tramways 
men had found their hold on their places precarious. He prints 
(page 28, Part II, Vol. II), a table showing the length of service 
of the motor men and conductors in service Aug. 11, 1906. That 
is, it is clear he knew all about the almost incredible state of affairs 
in the quitting and discharging of men in the department, and he 
never gave the illuminating statistics as I give them now. They 
would have killed his whole deceitful argument. This is the work 
of the Thorough Investigator, to whom "selecting facts" that suited 
him would be "impossible." 

Xote the question put to the applicant regarding his willingness 
to join the Departmental Friendly Society. Then read, page 51, 
our joint report (Part 11, Vol. II) : "In both Glasgow and Liver- 
pool the corporation [municipality] soon after municipalization, 
established friendly societies, to which both employees and the cor- 
poration contributed. To the existence of these organizations, de- 
scribed below, the union officials attribute a large part of their 
difficulty in organizing the employees, and they hold that the 
friendly societies were designed to take the place of the union." 
That is, had we municipal o^\Tiership spreading in the United 
States, the Glasgow Tramways Friendly Society would stand as a 
model to forestall organization of municipal employees on the trade 
union princijole, though it may be sure they would get together 
election day. Investigator Commons somehow has overlooked the 
opportunity in this instance to bring into play the phrases he used 
in denouncing the South Metropolitan Gas Company's benefit 
scheme — "union wrecking," "smashing of the union," "destroying 
the labor organizations," "'a system . . . ingeniously contrived 
to destroy the . . . union." And then there are these differ- 
ences : The South Metropolitan Company tells its employees they 
are free to-day to join any union whatsoever. Its employees do not 
leave at the rate of 25 per cent of the force every year — nor do 10 
per cent. They have a growing interest in the property. They 
can take an active part in politics whenever they are so inclined. 

It was an unkind cut at Professors Bemis and Parsons when 
Investigator Commons condemned the introduction in reviews of 
"criticisms not investigated." Newspaper quotation by these gentle- 
men in their summaries is voluminous. Investigator Commonb' 
own quotation from the Chicago "Xews-Record" against the Chi- 
cago Edison Company took on quite a harmless appearance when iu 
statements were corrected by the company officials. 



CONCLUSION. 



BOTH SIDES NOW HEARD. 



Had I co-operated on this Commission with a man whose dis^ 
criminating powers in investigation had been revealed as a veritable 
talent, whose accuracy and expository skill in report making had 
betokened an alert intellect and a disciplined desire for the truth, 
whose bearing had been transparently sincere and dealings nni- 
formly aboveboard, whose contact with company managers had 
brought him their respect, and whose attitude toward myself, pres- 
ent or absent, had been honorable, I would be distressed at my work 
as investigator being pronounced by him as unworthy my trust. But 
as our case now at length stands, with my side heard, the reader will 
know it is not for me to take to the penitential task of retrospection 
and introspection. 

Eeviewing my entire course with Professor Commons I fail to 
see how any manly nature could have expected from me treatment 
more consistently in line with justice and even generosity, or looked 
for opportunity more free to make the best of his claims than T 
accorded to him. If I ha^'e been guilty of any one omission in th^. 
wearisome tediousness of this Commission's work it has been that, 
yielding to my earnest hope for an impossible agreement as to the 
facts to be reported, I did not with sufficient firmness and sagacity 
defend character where he assailed it, compel him to produce proofs 
positive where he had but his own affirmations, and cut him short 
where he penned the divagations into which he was led by his bias. 

My policy as committeeman, working intimately for months 
with the Five on Scope and Plan, and for half a year as one of the 
sub-committee of two conducting the British investigation, seems 
from the outcome to have been satisfactory to my other colleagues. 
Where among them there was superior special information L 
acknowledged it; where there was no cause for interference T held 
off ; where there was good head-work or heart- work I believe it had 
promptly my recognition at every stage. 

From beginning to end I gave Investigator Commons the full 
play of his rights, the precedence expected by an investigator of his 
experience, and the unlimited trust due a man of honor. My habit 
was not to insist that my first impressions were indubitable facts 
but to review with him all matters he might question, not to hold to 
what I had written for our joint report until I had seen whether 
every sentence expressed the truth to his mind, not to show fight 
where time might work its changes — my sole lapse in this last- 
named regard being on his abrupt and contemptuous maligning of 
a labor man, against whose character I had heard nothing pre- 
viously. 

If in his density he misinterpreted my deferential bearing, my 
"apologetic" attitude, as he once termed it, as the outcome of an 
excessive temperamental prudence or as an evidence of the tribute 
due him in his possible power to place me in a false position, to 



126 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

him now tlife consequences. If he imagined that trying to reach 
concordance on facts in the report signified the suppression of facts 
in my review of high vakie to me or the narrowing of my views to 
his horizon, his was the stupidity. In giving him great lengths of 
rope I retained enough to hang him. I allowed him an almost un- 
limited field in which to follow his bent to build up his cause, he 
assumed every privilege within it, including that of making indis- 
criminate charges, until finally he arrived at slandering his team- 
mate, and 1 have penned him up for the rest of his days. 

I am now sure my theory for a report of the kind we were to 
issue was the true one. Proof sheets of our joint report should 
have been submitted in each case to the manager of the undertaking 
investigated, public or private, whether our findings were favorable 
or unfavorable. There is more truth for interested readers now in 
regard to the British private undertakings, since I have the mana- 
gers' corrections, than Investigator Commons, in his shortsighted- 
ness, gave in his ill-judged writings about them. From this method, 
as followed by myself (only) in America, came a considerable 
amount of alteration. Corrections by the Secretary of the Chicago 
Edison Company took the sting out of Investigator Commons' 
matter quoted from the ^^Xews-Eecord" (page 143) and threw 
much light on the company's wage statistics (page 146) ; accurate 
wage statements came from the Indianapolis Water Company (page 
157) ; changes were made by the President of the Atlanta Gas 
Company. In none of these cases was any attempt made to alter 
anything but obvious errors. The managers of the Cleveland and 
South Xorwalk municipal undertakings, w^hose letters on the mat- 
ter I have, had no suggestions for change in what I had written of 
them. Had Investigator Commons seen to it that I had a copy of 
his attack on me before it reached the public, I might not now be 
obliged to finish his career as a credible investigator, for our differ- 
ences could perhaps have been settled in private before the Com- 
mittee of Twenty-One. Years ago, as a writer on disputable ques- 
tions, I was well convinced of the merits of "Hear the other side." 
There are no managers to-day in either America or Great Britain, 
to say that I have permitted them to rest under misrepresentation, 
and there are no managers or experts to express astonishment at 
my making claims of writing "the entire report as it stands . . . 
on the basis of facts which I personally investigated" — or at any 
other claims that they could call in question. 

I believe also the plan of my review — restricting myself to 
salient and decisive considerations — was correct. My most closely 
interested readers, the wageworkers, wanted from me in a nutshell 
the outcome of our labor investigation, not only as to broad facts 
bearing on employees' welfare and trade unionism, but also as to thj 
general influence of municipal ownership on character in citizen- 
ship and the well being of the masses. That is what I had space 
to give. There was not wanted grandmotherly taps of approbation 
alternated with thimble raps of disapproval on inconsequential 
points — a report that looked east, west, and nowhere, and balanced 
evervthing but comprehensive truths. If there is any background of 
principle in the demand for a "judicial" report, it relates, not to a 
mousing over of endless minutise of the evidence in a sophomoric 
essay, but to the clear-cut opinions of a judge on the bench, who, 



BOTH SIDES NOW HEARD. 127 

disregarding irrelevant matter and the lesser issues involved in a 
case, brings out succinctly its deep-lying and far-reaching merits. 

If in my review I displayed a consistency with economic prin- 
ciples I have held for twenty 3^ears, it cannot be said I twisted facts 
for our joint report to support those principles. Investigator Com.- 
mons himself has fathered all the facts in that report for all the 
-undertakings "except New Haven and Philadelphia." 

And if I "allowed him a free rein in re-writing Socialist dia- 
tribes against the British companies, I had one motive among 
others for my indifference to their effect, if true, that I had from 
him in my pocket an agreement to help put before the public 
through the Committee of Twenty-One the substance, in fact most 
of the very items, of the essentially anti-municipal report which 
that Committee afterward agreed on. I w^as persistent while in 
Madison in getting that agreement drawn up on notes he took when 
he and I discussed the question of the Twenty-One's report; he 
told me later he was working over the matter with colleagues of his 
side, and I regarded the question settled against the pro-munici- 
palists once they could admit the recognitions of private owner- 
ship and detail the unattainable conditions for municipal owner- 
ship in America embodied in the paper. 

I assert that truth has been my constant aim — in the joint re- 
port, in my review, and in this rejoinder. I have played to no gal- 
lery, written no passage for garbled quotation, and I invite a fair 
review of all my work. 

I can meet every man I ever came in contact with in this inves- 
tigation and feel that T have done him no injustice. I treated Pro- 
fessor Comm^ons to the last with all forbearance, to the limits of 
mercifulness. When a third party coming forward to us both with 
overtures for peace last year confidently set out to induce him to 
eliminate his attack on me from his review, even after it had ap- 
peared in the newspapers, I entertained the proposal. But to be 
stubbornly vengeful has been his choice, and continuing to show 
him a consideration persistently despised would be fatuous. 

I would have welcomed a fine reply to my review by my oppo- 
nent. Lucid reasoning on a high plane, keen insight into principles 
I might have seen but diml)^, the short cut to logical results I had 
overlooked, original views of social obligations, the gratifying sur- 
prise of a defeat at points Avhere I had been too sure, a dexterous 
seizure of unconscious concessions had I made them, a literary 
dress above an almshouse inventor}^ — on such features I would have 
sent him my hearty congratulations. 

However much I was stung by his allusions to myself and as- 
tonished at his reckless statements as to "indorsement'' of municipal 
ownership in Glasgow by its opponents, and the like falsifying pas- 
sages that stud his production, the lasting and deepest effects on 
me of reading his review were disappointment at the indignity he 
had committed on the Commission and regret at the retribution he 
had invited upon himself. The bewilderment he exhibited as to the 
fundamental lessons to be adduced from our extended observations, 
and his meanderings from incoherent imitations of the convention- 
alities of professorial writing to taxing me with the very sins 
against fairness that he himself was committing, with his display of 



128 THE CIVIC FEDERATION LABOR REPORT. 

resentment at my presenting a course of reasoning he could not an- 
swer, evoked my profound sympathy for Jiis pettiness in mind, heart 
and spirit. 

If as one of the coterie of college Socialists — he is a member 
of the Xew York "X" Club, a panegyrist of the Fabians, an ac- 
cepted fellow of the semi-Socialist secretaries who insinuate them- 
selves into half-charity, half-radical societies — he aimed to destroy 
another labor representative who refuses to de- Americanize himself 
hy adopting their misplaced old-world communistic creed, he may 
now contemplate a ruin of closer personal interest to himself. In 
striking back at him I do duty, on behalf of all trade unionist lead- 
ers, against the gang who would ^'convert them or annihilate them.'* 

In his attack on my integrity as an investigator, as also in his 
attacks on both the British and American companies as honorable 
business agencies, he produced not a written or printed line to sup- 
port his allegations. But for every charge of any kind I herein 
make against him I have the clinching documentary evidence. 

Before I was on hand to watch him, he was in the habit of is- 
suing without check the port of literature on which much municipal 
ownership propaganda depended. x4fter he got away from my im- 
mediate supervision and investigated on his own hook and penned 
his review, he fell into his old inveterate habits of unreason and 
untruth. 

AVhile he has for years allowed to be well advertised his side 
of his woes as a reformer in college life, in reviewing his course on 
this Commission in all charity, it cannot but recur to the reader 
that there may be other explanations than his own why he was 
dropped from college professorships twice. 

Let no one imagine that I write for reinstatement in any circle 
of men to gain any material thing within their gift to my personal 
advantage. With the "public" and "employers' " groups of the 
Civic Federation possessed of this reply to the overt assault on the 
good faith of one of the labor representatives under their eye in 
the municipal investigation, and a covert assault on his honor, I 
step back into the ranks of organized labor, my business with the 
other groups done and my inclination to join in public service with 
them gone. 



LBAg'09 



f 



